'QVV 3^7. 




Glass B 9JjL- 

WA .V53H? 



THE WORKS OF NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D. 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. With an Introduction upon 
Psychology and the Human Soul. 8vo, - - $5.00 

ELEMENTS OF INTELLECTUAL SCIENCE. A Man- 
ual for Schools and Colleges, Abridged from "The 
Human Intellect," Crown 8vo, - 3.00 

ELEMENTS OF MORAL SCIENCE. Theoretical and 
Practical. Crown 8vo, 3.00 

BOOKS AND READING. An Enlarged and Revised 
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THE AMERICAN COLLEGES AND THE AMERICAN 
PUBLIC, WITH AFTER-THOUGHTS ON COLLEGE 
AND SCHOOL EDUCATION. 12mo, - - 1.50 

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THE 



ELEMENTS 



INTELLECTUAL SCIENCE. 



A MANUAL FOR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. 



ABRIDGED FROM "THE HUMAN INTELLECT." 



By NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D. 



NEW YORK: 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
1890. 






7 



iuattxed according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 

CHAS. SCRIBNER & CO., 
In th« office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Exchange 

Augustana College Uby. 

Sept. 28 1934 



PREFACE. 



In accordance with the wishes of many instructors and 
friends of education, the author has prepared an abridged 
edition of his work entitled, The Human Intellect, which 
was first published in 1868. In doing this, he has retained 
all the leading positions of the original work, with many 
of the illustrations, occasionally condensing the language, 
and not infrequently changing the order and method of 
the argument. Many important topics, less adapted to an 
elementary work, have been omitted altogether. The con- 
troversial and critical observations, have to a large extent 
been dropped, or greatly abridged. The historical matter 
has been in part retained, so far as seemed appropriate to 
a strictly elementary manual. In order, however, to meet 
the wants of schools, as well as of colleges, some of the 
matter which is less adapted to beginners, has been printed 
in smaller type. This may be reserved for a review, or 
omitted altogether. The author did not feel at liberty, 
however, to forego for the sake of beginners, a thorough 
discussion of the important speculative questions which 
occupy the concluding part of the treatise. For the con- 
venience of those teachers and pupils who may wish to 



IV PREFACE. 

consult the larger work the leading divisions and titles in 
both volumes are the same. With many thanks for the 
favor with which the previous treatise has been received, 
this manual is now offered to the public, and especially to 
teachers and pupils in schools and colleges. 



N. P. 



Yale College, July, 1871. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SOUL. 



TAG* 

I.- -Psychology Defined and Vindicated 1 

§ 1. Psychology and kindred terms. \ 2. Psychology is a science. § 3. Its 
relations to physiology and anthropology. £ 4. Its phenomena known by con- 
sciousness. § 5. Its phenomena impel to scientific study. $ 6. Value of Psy- 
chology. It promotes self-knowledge and moral culture — Disciplines to moral 
reflection. g 7. Trains to the knowledge of human nature. \ 8. Is indispensable 
to educators. § 9. Disciplines for the study of literature. § 10. Psychology the 
mother of the sciences which relate to man. § 11. Its special relation to logic 
and metaphysics. § 12. Is a discipline to method. 

II.— The Kelations of the Soul to Matter. . . .11 

§ 13. Psychology is a branch of physics. § 14. Reasons why its facts are at 
first distrusted by the student. § 15. Material phenomena are the earliest known. 
§ 16. Materialistic misgivings and impressions. # 17. These should be set aside. 
In what way. \ 18. The arguments of the materialist. (1). The soul is con- 
nected with a body— 2. The soul is developed with the body— 3. Is dependent on 
the body for its knowledge and enjoyment — 4. Also for its energy and activity— 
5. It terminates a series of material existences — The conclusion of the materialist. 
# 19. Counter arguments. (1). Its phenomena are unlike material phenomena— 
2. The soul distinguishes itself from matter— 3. The soul is self-active — 4. Is not 
dependent on matter in its highest activities — 5. Gradation of existence does not 
prove the soul to be material. § 20. The phenomena of the soul real. § 21. Phe- 
nomena of one sort cannot be judged by those of another. g 22. The phenomena, 
and language in which they are described, g 23. Misleading influence of lan- 
guage. 

HI. — The Faculties of the Soul 24 

\ 24. Question concerning the faculties. § 25. Faculties not parts or organs — 
Each faculty does not act at a separate time. # 26. States of the soul are like 
and unlike one another — Their elements are like and unlike in quality— They are 

V 



VI CONTENTS. 

dependent on one another — One element is preponderant in each state. £ 27 
Faculty denned. General authority — Special authority. § 28. These faculties 
common to all men. $ 29. The faculties not independent of one another. § 30. 
The unity of the soul — Different kinds of unity — Psychical unity is the highest 
of all. § 31. Unity does not exclude complexness. $ 32. Powers of the soul, 
threefold. § 33. Faculty, power, capacity. § 34. Function, state, phenomenon. 

IV. — Is Psychology a Science, and what are its Prin- 
ciples and Methods? 34 

§ 35. Materials of psychology; It is an inductive science, and the science of 
induction. $ 36. Some hold psychology too vague to be a science, g 37. The 
materialistic view of psychology. § 38. The cerebralist theory. § 39. The 
phrenological theory. § 40. The Associationalist theory — Usually materialistic. 
§ 41. Metaphysical or a priori Psychology. 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT: 
ITS FUNCTION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FACULTIES. 

A PRELIMINARY CHAPTER 42 

§ 42. Knowledge defined. What is it to know ? § 43. The process which pre- 
pares objects of knowledge. § 44. To know, implies the certainty of being. 
§ 45. Also the reality of relations. § 46. When is the process of knowledge com- 
plete ? $ 47. The act of knowing is diverse in its energy. Attention. § 48. 
The psychological and logical relation of processes and products — The critical, 
or speculative, application of knowledge. # 49. Order of intellectual develop- 
ment, growth and studies. § 50. Principles of classifying the powers of the in- 
tellect. § 51. The presentative faculty. g 52. The representative faculty. § 53. 
Thought, or intelligence — Two aspects or forms of thought. 



CONTENTS. VU 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



PART FIRST. 

PRESENTATION AND PRESENTATIVE KNOWLEDGE. 

PAGK 

I.— Consciousness — Natural Consciousness. . . 61 

§ 54. Consciousness denned. Variously applied. $ 55. Two forms of con- 
sciousness. $ 56. Natural consciousness as an act. $ 57. Consciousness the ob- 
ject. # 58. Relation of consciousness to each of the elements of a psychical 
state. $ 59. The activity may be chiefly noticed. £ 60. Consciousness of the 
ego. $ 61. The relation of consciousness to the objects of psychical activity. 
§ 62. The object of consciousness is a state of being — Special sense of cogito, ergo 
$um. § 63. The validity of relations is also established. $ 64. The development 
and growth of consciousness. § 65. Latent modifications of consciousness. 

II. — The Reflective, or Philosophical Consciousness. . 78 

$ 66. The reflective consciousness defined — The abnormal consciousness in 
children and adults — The ethical consciousness. § 67. The scientific reflective 
consciousness. Characterized by persistent attention. $ 68. It attends to all the 
psychical phenomena. \ 69. Compares and classifies them. $ 70. Interprets and 
explains them by powers and laws. § 71. Relations of the philosophical to the 
natural consciousness. § 72. Office of language in respect to each — The language 
of common life sometimes the most trustworthy. $ 73. The actions of men also 
an important test of truth. § 74. Conditions of reaching the decisions of con- 
sciousness. $ 75. Uncertainty and slow progress of psychology explained. § 76. 
Peculiar difficulties in the study of the soul. 

III.— Sense-Perception : The Conditions and the Process. 93 

§ 77. Sense-perception defined and distinguished — Is developed earliest of all 
the powers — Seems to be the most familiar. Is not the most easily understood — 
Distinguished from other mental acts — Knowledge of matter not gained by sense- 
perception — What are acts of sense-perception ? — Knowledge that is gained by 
sense-perception — Results of analysis. Eight topics proposed. $ 78. The con- 
ditions enumerated. The first condition — The nervous system. The sensorium — 
The reflex action of the nerves. \ 78 a. The second condition is an object or ex- 
eitant. § 79. The third condition. Its action on the sensorium. $ 80. The 
process of sense-perception in the simplest form ; what is it ? — It is psychical, not 
physiological — It is complex of two elements — The elements unequal in energy ; 
in the same, and the different senses, g 81. Sensation proper pertains to the sou', 
§ 82. Yet experienced by the goul connected with an organism. $ 83. The sensa- 
tions localized. § 84. Differ from one another in quality and definiteness. g 85, 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

Perception proper, an act of pure knowledge. § 86. Its object a non-ego. What 
kind of a non-tvjro. § ^7. An extended non-ego. \ 88. Perception attends all the 
sensations — The extension and externality of all objects not given with equal 
clearness. £ 89. The varying relations of sensation and perception proper — In 
different sensations of the ume sense — In the different senses. 

IV.— Classes of Semie-Perceptions 109 

$ 90. Three classes of se^se-perceptions. The muscular. $ 91. The organic: 
§92. The special sense-perc^tions. Smell; its organ, conditions, and objects* 
§ 93. Taste: organs and objects. Variety of the sensations. §94 Hearing; its 
organ and objects — The sensb,dons various. In what respects distinguishable — 
Sounds in succession and combination. Melody and harmony — The condition of 
oral language. Expressive ui feeling. § 95. The sense of touch. Its organ — 
Essential condition of toucL. § 96. Variety of sensations involved in touch. 
Sensations of gentle touch — I ensations involving violence or injury — Sensations 
of temperature — Sensations w pressure and weight — The muscular sensations — 
Sensations localized. § 97. Perceptions proper of touch — Extension perceived by 
touch. Not explicable by extension in the organism, g 98. The perception of 
externality by touch — Two meanings of externality — ExternaHty in the first sig- 
nification — Objection answered. § 99. Sense of touch the leading sense — Fur- 
nishes intellectual terms. \ 100. Sight; its organ and the conditions of vision — 
Function of the image on th.3 retina — Sensations proper of vision. \ 101. Per- 
ception proper in vision. Tne object of vision — Is always extended — Visible ex- 
tension superficial only — A dingle object seen with two eyes — Original place of 
the visible percept. $ 102. Dignity of the eye. 

V. — The acquired Sense-Perceptions 132 

# 103. The sense-perceptions, as original and acquired — Impoi-tancc and time 
of gaining the acquired perceptions. § 104. The acquired perceptions of smell 
and hearing. § 105. Acquired perceptions of sight. Distance judged by size — 
Judgments of magnitudes by distance — Judgments of distance by color, outline, 
clearness, etc. — Judgments of size by other equidistant objects — Influence of In- 
termediate objects. § 106. Judgments of form, etc., by sight. § 107. Acquired 
sense-perceptions of place, motion and expression within the body — The provi- 
sions of nature for these ends — The control by the intellect of these arrangements 
— How we learn to talk and to walk — Feats of dexterity. Expressional effects. 
§ 108. The errors of the senses explained. § 109. The acquired perceptions as 
forms of knowledge — They involve induction — Objections from the cases of ani- 
mals — Reasons why the perceptions of animals and of man should differ. 

VI.— Development and Growth of Sense-Perception. . 150 

# 110. Nature, interest, and difficulty of the problem. § 111. The intellect, 
condition of the, before sense-perception begins — The beginnings and development 
of attention. # 112. The order in which the perceptions are developed. § 113, 
The development of touch — Hamilton's theory of the perception of the extra- 
organic. # 114. Development of vision. $ 115. Combination of touch and vision 
— Observations upon infants. § 116. The blind from birth, upon the recovery of 
light. 



CONTENTS. IX 

PAGE 

VII. — The Products of Sense-Perception; or, The Per- 
ception of Material Things 165 

§ 117. Material things and sense-percepts, g 117 a. The first stage of percep- 
tion; limited to coincidence in space and time. §118. The second stage: Tha 
relation of substance and attribute — This relation supposes reflex and indirect 
knowledge. g 119. The conditions of complete perception. § 120. Can we attend 
to more than one thing at a time ? 

VIII. — Activity of the Soul in Sense-Perception . . 180 

§ 121. Sense-perception held by many to be passive only — Grounds on which 
the theory rests. £ 122. Evidence that the soul is active. § 123. Different modea 
of this activity — Is elementary, and easily exercised. 

Sense-Perception: Summary and Eeview. . . .187 
IX. — Theories of Sense-Perception. . ' . . . 189 

$ 125. Interest of the theories and their history. $ 126. The early Greek phil- 
osophers — Aristotle. $ 127. The schoolmen. Their doctrine of species. <? 128. 
Descartes, Malebranche, and Arnauld. $ 129. John Locke. $ 130. Bishop 
George Berkeley, David Hume. $ 131. T. Reid, Dugald Stewart, Dr. T. Brown. 
\ 132. Sir William Hamilton. $ 133. Immanuel Kant, and the German school. 



PART SECOND. 

REPRESENTATION AND REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLEDGE. 

I. — The Eepresentative Power Defined and Explained. 206 

$ 134. Representation defined and illustrated. \ 135. Appellations for the 
power. £ 136. Objects of the representative power. $ 137. These objects involve 
relations. § 138. Conditions and laws of representation considered. $ 139. 
Representation divided into several varieties. $ 140. Interest and importance 
of the representative power. 

II.— The Eepresentative Object— Its Nature and Im- 
portance 21& 

\ 141. Why the object of representation needs special discussion. $ 112. It is 
a pyschical object. $ 143. It is a transient and short-lived object. $ 144. It is 
an intellectual object. \ 145. The relation can be compared to no other. $ 146. 
Representative ideas of objects of consciousness and sense-perception do not re- 
semble them. Memory. § 147. Positive characteristics of mental pictures. $ 148. 
In thought, we prefer ideas to realities. $ 149. Ideas especially useful in com- 
parison and generalization. § 150. Images prepare for and aid to action. 



I CONTENTS. 

FAGt 

III. — The Conditions and Laws of Representation — The 

Association of Ideas , 225 

§ 151. Association of ideas. Importance and interest of the subject. § 152. 
Laws of association. $ 153. Association not explained by bodily organization. 
§ 154. The laws of association cannot be referred to any attractive power in 
ideas as such. $ 155. Nor into the force of relations as such — Are not other 
relations supposable? $156. The law of redintegration. $157. The real expla- 
nation. How enounced — Associations with home. $ 158. The secondary laws 
defined — How far reducible to the same principle with the primary. \ 159. 
Apparent exceptions to the law of association. $ 160. Representation unceas- 
ingly active. How it can be interrupted. $ 161. Law of association and law 
of habit. § 162. Higher and lower laws of association. 

IV. — Representation. — (1.) The Memory, or Recognizing 

Faculty. 254 

§ 163. The elements essential to an act of memory. $ 164. Memory techni- 
cally defined. Relation of memory to representation. $ 165. The spontaneous 
memory. $ 165 a. The intentional memory. $ 166. Memory as the power to 
retain, and to lose. $ 167. Dependence on the body. $ 168. Varieties of mem- 
ory; how explained — Development of memory. Its characteristics in the several 
periods of life. # 169. The education of the memory. \ 170. The cultivation of 
the memory; mnemonics. 

V. — Representation. — (2.) The Phantasy, or imaging 

Power 278 

$ 171. Phantasy defined and illustrated. $ 172. The interest of its problems — 
The power of association is operative in them all — Deviations accounted for. (1.) 
By changes in the relative proportion of the powers. $ 173. Sleep physiolog- 
ically considered. $ 174. Sleep considered psychologically. $ 175. Somnambu- 
lism, or abnormal sleep. $ 176. Hallucinations, apparitions, etc. \ 177. Insanity. 

VI. — Representation. — (3.) The Imagination or Creative 

Power 295 

$ 178. Conditions and materials common to the imagination. $ 179. The 
power of the imagination to create new products. § 180. The combining and 
arranging office of the imagination. $ 181. The idealization of the relations of 
apace and time in art, and mathematical science. £ 182. 3. The formation of an 
ideal standard for psychical acts and states. $ 183. The imagination is capable 
of growth and culture. # 181. Is developed from the earliest till the latest 
periods in life. $ 185. Special applications of the imagination. The poetio 
imagination. $ 186. Its medium is language. $ 187. The philosophic imagina- 
tion. $ 188. The practical and ethical imagination. $ 189. Relation of the im- 
agination to religious faith. 



CONTENTS. Xl 

PART THIRD. 

THOUGHT AND THOUGHT-KNOWLEDGE. 

PAGB 

1. — Thought-knowledge Defined and Explained. . . 319 

§ 190. Thinking and the thought power denned. \ 191. Appellations for the 
power of thinking, etc. £ 192. Relation of thought to the lower powers. § 193. 
Concrete and abstract thinking. § 194. Relations of thought to language. 

II. — The Formation of the Concept or Notion. . . 327 

§ 195. The processes involved in forming the concept. \ 196. The product, its 
nature and appellation. § 197. Concepts as concrete and abstract, as simple and 
complex ; their content and extent. $ 198. Classification, its origin and different 
species. $ 199. How much do we gain by knowing by concepts. \ 200. Relation 
of knowledge by concepts and by intuitions. 

III. — The Nature of the Concept. — Sketch of Theories. 339 

§ 201. The doctrines of Socrates and Plato, and Aristotle. $ 202. Porphyry's 
questions and the scholastics. § 203. Modern Philosophers — G. W. Leibnitz. 
§ 204. G. W. F. Hegel. 

IV.— The Nature of the Concept. — General Names. — 

Language 45 

\ 205. Essential characteristics of the concept. $ 206. How far the concep- 
tualist and nominalist are both right. $ 207. The imaging of concepts — Differ- 
ent images illustrate the same concept. £ 208. The truth represented by realism 
— The classifications of Botany. $ 209. Value of naming and of language. 
§ 210. The relation of symbolic to intuitive knowledge. 

V. — Judgment, and the Proposition 358 

g 211. Judgment implied in the formation and use of the concept. § 212. Judg- 
ments are psychological and logical — How the subject of a judgment is expressed 
in language. § 213. The Signification of the copula. £ 214. Classes of judg- 
ments. Judgments of content. § 215. Judgments of extent. § 216. Scientific 
and common knowledge. 

VI. — Reasoning. — Deduction of Mediate Judgment. . 366 

§ 217. Nature and importance of reasoning. \ 218. Reasoning, inductive and 
deductive. § 219. The forms of deduction. § 220. The syllogism not a but the 
form of deduction. g 221. The dicta or formula of the syllogism. $ 222. Deduc- 
tion rests on the relation of reason to consequent. \ 223. The relation of logical 
reasons to cause and laws. § 224. Geometrical reasons. 

VII. — Reasoning. — Varieties of Deduction. . . 373 

§ 225. The varieties are three; these subdivided. # 226. Probable reasoning. 
§ 227. Mathematical reasoning, materials of. § 228. Definitions and axioms. 
\ 229. The construction of geometrical figures. Auxiliary lines, etc. § 220. 



Xll CONTENTS. 

Geometrical reasoning explained by an example. $ 231. Immediate syllogisms. 
\ 232. Two elements in most acts of deduction. $ 233. Deduction adds to our 
knowledge. In what sense ? 

VIII.— Inductive Seasoning or Induction. . . .391 

§ 234. Inductions properly and improperly so-called. $ 235. Inductions of 
common life and inductions of science. $ 236. Why are the indications of science 
more difficult? $ 237. The a priori relations assumed in induction. $ 238. The 
three rules of induction. $ 239. The conditions of a successful hypothesis and 
discovery. § 240. The choice between hypotheses. \ 241. The place of experi- 
ment. 

IX. — Scientific Arrangement. — The System. . . 416 

$ 242. Scientific arrangement. System in its lower import. § 243. System 
in its higher significance. 



PART FOURTH. 

INTUITION. — THE CATEGORIES. — FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

I. — The Intuitions Defined and Enumerated. . . 419 

§ 244. The critical and speculative stage of our studies — They have bee.i re- 
ferred to a separate faculty — The appellations by which they are known. \ 245. 
Not first in the order of time, but in logical importance — They are, in fact, at- 
tained last in the order of time. § 246. Various significations of a principle. 
§ 247. The relation of intuition to experience. £ 248. The Three Criteria of '^irst 
Truths. # 249. They are independent of one another — Hegel's development of 
the categories. $ 250. Divided into three classes. 

II. — Theories of Intuitive Knowledge. . . . 433 

I 251. The theory of a direct mental vision of first truths. § 252. The theory 
that they are discerned by the light of nature. § 253. That they are innate or 
connate. $ 254. The views of Locke and his school. $ 255. Dr. Reid and the 
Scottish School. \ 256. Kant and his School. $ 257. Hamilton's Positive and 
Negative Necessity. § 258. The theory of Faith as contrasted with knowledge. 
I 259. J. G. Fichte. \ 260. Schelling's view of the categories. £ 261. Hegel's 
theory of pure thought. § 262. Hcrbart's theory. 

III.— Formal Eelations or Categories. . . . 446 

\ 263. The category of being. — In what sense fundamental, $ 264. The most 
abstract of all the categories, $ 265. Is indefinable and indeterminate. # 266. 
Relationship. Diversity and similarity. — Relative notions. Negative notions, 
g 207. Substance aud attribute formally conceived. #208. The logical axioms 
of identity, eto. 



CONTENTS. Xiii 

PAGE 

IV. — Mathematical Relations: Time and Space. , 454 

$ 269. Development of the several relations of extension. $ 270. Duration, 
how related to the acts of the soul. § 271. The mind discerns extended and en- 
during objects together. $272. Limitations of sense-perception. §273. Beyond 
these we use the imagination. $ 274. Measures of time-objects are imaginary. — ■ 
Different capacities in different men. — Differences in the estimates of time. — ■ 
Whence standards for both space and time are derived. § 275. How the relations 
of space and time objects are generalized. £ 276. Two classes of mathematical 
concepts. The geometrical. — Postulates of geometrical quantity. § 277. The 
concepts of number. \ 278. The application of number to magnitude. § 279. 
Why, and how mathematical concepts are applicable to material objects. £ 280. 
Time and space relations can be still further generalized. § 281. Extended and 
enduring objects are limited. \ 282. Extension and duration distinguished from, 
but related to space and time. § 283. They limit objects and events. § 284. 
In what sense space and time are unlimited. § 285. Space and Time cannot be 
generalized under higher concepts. $ 286. They are known as the conditions of 
their limited correlates. $ 287. What are space and time ? Conclusion. 

V. — Causation and the Relation of Causality. . 480 

$ 289. Causation as a law, and as a principle. § 290. Event defined. § 291, 
Cause distinguished from conditions. § 292. The relation cannot be resolved into 
a time-relation. § 293. The principle of causality intuitively evident. § 294. 
Counter theories. The belief not acquired by induction or association. £ 295. 
Not resolvable into outward or inner experience, or both. Locke and De Biran. 
§ 296. The theory which resolves causality into a relation of concepts. § 297. 
Hamilton's theory of causation. — Conclusion. Our position re-affirmed. 

VI. — Design of Final Cause 498 

§ 298. Terms explained. Formal, material, efficient, and final causes. § 299. 
Design and adaptation, how related. £ 300. The relation assumed as necessary 
and a priori. $ 301. Reasons. The mind impelled to connect objects by this 
relation. § 302. The relation is higher than that of efficient causation. § 303. 
The principle has been of essential service in scientific discovery. § 304. The 
foundation of the inductive philosophy. § 305. Required to explam the pheno- 
mena of organic existences. § 306. Relation of final to efficient causes in the 
higher orders of being. § 307. Objections : (1.) Men mistake in their judgments 
about final causes. £ 308. (2.) Our interpretations can neither be tested nor con- 
firmed. § 309. (3.) This relation derived from conscious experience. — The rela- 
tion unquestioned in some applications. \ 310. (4.) Two principles introduced 
into philosophy which may possibly conflict. § 311. (5.) The search after final 
causes has hindered discovery. \ 312. (6.) The adaptations of nature are only 
the conditions of existence. § 313. (7.) Adaptation is limited to organic exist- 
ence. £ 314. (8.) We are not warranted in affirming it of all kinds of existence. 
§ 315. (9.) Adaptation cannot be affirmed of an unlimited Being. § 316, The 
principle is illustrated and confirmed by its application to metaphysics. § 317. 
Applied in geometrical construction and deduction. $ 318. Applied in geology* 
etc. \ 319. Applied in geography and history; § 320. Also in comparative an 



XIV CONTENTS. 

tomy and physiology. § 321. Applied in anthropology ; — In the provisions foi 
and the capacities of language. § 322. Application to psychology. $ 323. Ap- 
plied and assuumed in ethics. § 324. Application to theology. — The commoii 
argument for the Divine existence. 

VII. — Substance and Attribute: Mind and Matter. . 524 

§ 325. Uses and etymology of the terms. § 326. Substance and attribute in 
the abstract. $ 327. Spiritual or mental substance. § 328. Material substance 
denned. $ 329. Space occupation and identity of matter. $ 330. The produc- 
tion of new substances. — The real Essence or Thing in itself. § 331. A material 
substance not necessarily independent. — Dogmas that seem to deny permanence. 
§ 332. Tbe reciprocal relations of material and spiritual substance. — Mind and 
matter directly and indirectly known. \ 333. The qualities of matter as primary 
and secondary. $ 335. Real and phenomenal or relative knowledge. 

VIII.— The Finite and Conditioned. — The Infinite and Abso- 
lute. 541 

§ 336. To know, a limiting process. $ 337. The finite universe \ how con- 
ceived. % 338. The import of the terms infinite and absolute. $ 339. The un- 
conditioned is the non-conditioned. — Applied to quality and quantity. $ 340, 
The absolute, several causes of. The Hegelian sense. $ 341. What is not truo 
of the absolute, etc. g 342. The absolute, etc., are knowable. — Views of Kant, 
Hamilton, and Mansel. — Herbert Spencer dissents in part. § 343. The absolute 
apprehended by the intellect. § 344. Not know exhaustively or adequately. — 
The finite universe infinite to our knowledge. — The absolute a thinking agent. 
§ 345. Must be assumed to explain thought and science. 



INTRODUCTION. 



PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SOUL. 



PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED AND VINDICATED. 

§ 1. Psychology is the science of the human soul. _ . , 

m J Psychology, 

The appellation is of comparatively recent use by and kindred 
English writers, but is now generally accepted as 
the most appropriate term to denote the scientific knowledge of 
the whole soul, as distinguished from a single class of its endow- 
ments or functions. The terms in frequent use — mental philoso- 
phy, the philosophy of the mind, intellectual philosophy, etc. — should 
be strictly limited to a single power of the soul, i. e., its power to 
know, and should never be extended to its capacity to feel 
and to will, or to all its endowments collectively. The terms 
metaphysics and philosophy, when used without an adjunct, can- 
not designate any special science, but only one which is general 
and fundamental to all the sciences, both material and psychical. 

§ 2. Psychology is a science. It professes to exhi- 
bit what is actually known or may be learned con- ^'aSenS "* 
cerning the soul, in the forms of science — i. e., in the 
forms of exact observation, precise definition, fixed terminology, 
classified arrangement, and rational explanation. 

It is the science of the soul; i. e., the science which has the soul 
for its subject-matter. Soul differs from spirit as the species from 
the genus ; soul being limited to a spirit that either is or has been 
connected with a body or material organization ; while spirit may 
also be applied to a beiDg that has at present no such connec- 
tion, or is believed never to have had any. 

The term soul originally signified the principle of life or mo- 

1 



2 INTRODUCTION. § 3 

tion in a material organism. It was especially appropriated to 
the vital principle which was supposed to animate the body, 
whether in man or the lower animals. This signification is appa- 
rent in the threefold division of man into body, soul, and spirit, 
in which the soul occupies the place between the corporeal ele- 
ment, and the spiritual. This intermediate part was sometimes 
called the animal soul, and was Relieved to perish with the body. 
Hence, the term spirit was applied to a nature that had never 
been fixed in a body, or soiled and degraded by connection with 
it. But in the New Testament, (poyjxoq — -psychical — is often applied 
to the body _ji the sense of animal, to distinguish it from the 
spiritual body. We recognize somewhat of the earlier and 
lower meaning in the phrases, "The soul of the universe," " The 
soul of a plant," "The soul of an enterprise or interest;" i. e. the 
animating principle of the universe, etc., etc. 

§ 3. Psychology is distinguished from physiology 
to pifySgy an d anthropology. Both these sciences have man as 
iooio anthro " their subject. Physiology studies man as a material 
organism ; distinguishing the several organs of which 
it is composed, the special functions of each, and the combined 
activity of all in a living being. It is true the structure and 
arrangement of some of these organs cannot be explained without 
a distinct recognition of their relations to a spiritual agent. But 
while physiology must recognize the functions of the soul, it need 
only consider those phenomena which are familiarly known. For 
all its purposes, the knowledge and the terminology of com- 
mon life are entirely sufficient ; as when physiology explains the 
structure of the eye, the ear, and the hand, by their relations to 
human vision and hearing, to tactual or mechanical skill. Its 
principal and almost exclusive sphere is the bodily structure and 
functions, as phenomena that can be explained with reference to 
the animal economy, and the conditions of bodily development 
and life. 

Anthropology, as the term imports, treats of the whole man, as 
body and soul. It differs from psychology in treating of these 
factors when combined so as to form one product in many varie- 
ties. Of this product it gives the natural history. It investigates 
man as this complex whole, as varied in temperament, race, sex, 
and age; and as affected by climate, employment, or a more 



§ 5. PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED AND VINDICATED. 3 

or less perfect civilization. It inquires how man is formed ! 
and changed in body and soul by inherited peculiarities and 
accidental circumstances. It discusses the influence of the 
soul upon the body and the influence of the body on the soul, .^ 
whether in the normal or the abnormal states and functions of 
3ach. But it notices and records these phenomena, only so far 
as they are open to general observation and require no scientific 
analysis or explanation. To psychology it leaves the special and 
profound study of the soul ; to physiology, the more thorough 
examination of the functions of the body. 

§ 4. Psychology is distinguished still further from 
physiology in that the phenomena with which it has its phenomena 
to do are apprehended by consciousness ; while the sciousness. 
phenomena of physiology are discerned by the senses. 
Psychology proceeds on the assumption that certain facts or 
phenomena may be known by the soul concerning itself. The 
power of the soul to know itself and its own states is termed con- 
sciousness. How the soul gains this knowledge, and what are the 
nature, the varieties, and the aids of consciousness, will be con- 
sidered in the proper place. 

That the soul does know itself, and confides in the knowledge 
thus attained, will be acknowledged by every one. The facts 
differ greatly from those which we observe by hearing, seeing, 
and touching. They are very numerous and various in their 
quality, differing from each other in important features, and yet; 
having this feature in common, that they are known by the soul 
to which they pertain, and known to belong to itself. 

§ 5. These phenomena, so numerous and peculiar, 
excite the desire and effort to reduce them to the ex- its phenomena 

-, P . .f. ■, , m . impel to scien* 

actness and symmetry of scientific knowledge. That tmc study. 
they actually occur, cannot be questioned. No one 
doubts, or cares to deny, that he thinks and remembers, that 
he hopes and fears. They are the most interesting of all events 
to the individual who experiences them. The knowledge and 
the imaginings, the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows of each 
person, make up the most important part of his being. They 
also go very far in deciding our success or failure in life. What 
we accomplish in our acts and achievements, depends most of all 
on what we are in our thoughts and aspirations, in our plans an<3 



4 INTRODUCTION. § 

energy. The mind, which we know so well, is ever at our hand 
as the instrument with which we execute our purposes and direct 
I our acts. The soul within us is the well-spring ever open at our 
door and springing up at our feet, from which we draw our most 
satisfying joys and our bitterest sorrows. Phenomena like these 
are the legitimate objects of those scientific inquiries to which we 
are so powerfully impelled. The phenomena which are so near 
us at all times, which intrude themselves upon our attention 
even when we desire to exclude them, — which constitute the world 
within, to which the man himself alone has access, but which is 
yet, to him, more important than all the world without — deserve 
to be studied, and, if possible, to be scientifically classified and 
accounted for. 

§ 6. It may seem needless to dwell upon the value 
value of Psy- of psychological studies. They are peculiar in this, 
pJomo°te g s y s 'ei I f' that, to whatever power of the soul they are directed, 
murri 1 cuuure nd they require and strengthen the habit of self-know- 
ledge. No real knowledge of the soul can be gained 
except by turning the gaze inward. Each student must do this 
himself, for no one can do it for another. Books and instructors, 
essays, poetry and the drama, cannot describe or teach that 
which is not confirmed by the researches of the learner within his 
own spirit. For the man who is disposed to reflect, they can do 
much, by instructing him where and how to look ; but to him 
who will not converse with himself, they can impart no instruc- 
tion ; they must speak in an unknown tongue. They cannot cre- 
ate conceptions in the mind that will not verify them in its own 
experience. 

This discipline to reflection, with the habits which it forms, is 
the condition of self-control. He that studies his own powers, 
may learn how to direct and use them. It also lays the founda- 
tion for moral self-improvement. He that would improve his 
character, must first know what his character is. He must dis- 
cover what are his better and what his worse impulses ; what are 
the points at which he is most easily assailed, and by what sensi- 
bilities or emotions he can most readily rally his forces and over- 
come their assailants. With self-improvement, self-government 
is intimately associated. He that would make himself better, 
must learn to set himself over against himself as his own master 



§ 6. PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED AND VINDICATED. 5 

repressing the evil, and educing and encouraging the good. JBut 
he that would rule himself, must first know himself. " Know 
"thyself," was written over the portal at Delphi. It was inculcated 
by Socrates, that preeminent teacher of practical ethics, who, 
measuring every species of knowledge by its tendency to make 
man better, regarded this maxim as the summary of wisdom. 
We ought not to omit the peculiar grace and 

i ,7,.. , , , . . Disciplines to 

onarm which is imparted to the character by that moral reflec* 
moral reflection which is the natural result of self- 
acquaintance. To learn to put ourselves in the condition of 
others, by imagining what would be our expectations and what 
our feelings were we in their place, not only disciplines and 
guides to that common justice which the laws enjoin, and to that 
unselfish morality which the Golden Rule prescribes, but it is 
the secret of that considerate sympathy and refined courtesy 
which invest with a peculiar attractiveness a few superior 
natures. It is by this process that we learn to clothe the severe 
form of allegiance to duty with the graceful robe of unselfish, 
sympathetic, and divine charity. 

Dr. Thomas Arnold was accustomed to make much of what 
he called " moral thoughtfulness," as the trait of character 
which he desired most of all to perfect in his pupils, and which 
he defined as " the inquiring love of truth going along with the 
divine love of goodness." This " moral thoughtfulness " is 
fostered by self-acquaintance, when prosecuted with the honest 
purpose of self-improvement. It leads to a wider sympathy 
with man than is bounded by the circle of acquaintances, of 
countrymen, or even of those now living. It conducts the thoughts 
backward along the history of the past, and forward among the 
problems of the future. From this enlarged sympathy arise 
more hopeful and tolerant views of present evils, a firmer faith 
in the purposes of Providence and the prospects and progress of 
man, and a more cautious and candid estimate of the excitements 
and prejudices which attend the partisan conflicts of the passing 
hour. Superior natures, in all situations in life, have ever been 
reflective natures. When the opportunity has been furnished, 
they have been attracted by psychological studies and fascinated 
by the mysteries which these attempt to unveil and resolve. 



6 INTRODUCTION. § 7. 

§ 7. The self-knowledge which psychology fosters, 
Trains to the and to which it insensibly trains, is the one instru- 

k n o w ledge of . 

human nature, mentality by which we learn to understand our fel- 
low-men. The sharp and searching look by which 
one man sees through another, and reads the secret which he is 
unwilling to confess, is attained only by the fine and subtle 
analysis of one's self. What is perceived, is only external 
signs ; as words, looks, or gestures. To the thought, the feeling, 
the purpose which they suggest, there is no direct access. The 
only thoughts and feelings which the interpreter can know 
directly, are his own ; and it is by a close and habitual study of 
these that he is able to connect them with the signs through 
which the thoughts and feelings of other men are revealed. 

§ 8. If, also, we would know our fellow-men to do 

Is indispen- 

sable to educa- them good, we must first know ourselves. This sug- 
gests the important service which psychology may 
render to teachers of every class. It is the office of the teacher 
to communicate knowledge. But to communicate is to im- 
part, i. e., to awaken in the mind of another — the thoughts which 
exist in the mind of the teacher. Hence, skill in the method or 
art of teaching, as distinguished from the possession of knowledge, 
depends almost entirely upon the power of a man to measure and 
judge of the effect of his instructions. The clear, methodical, 
and satisfactory communication of knowledge follows from often 
asking, What truths are most easily and naturally received at 
first, or as the foundations for others ? What illustrations and 
examples are most pertinent and satisfactory ? What degree of 
repetition and inculcation is required in order to cause the in- 
struction to remain ? How can individual peculiarities of intellect 
be successfully addressed, and, if need be, corrected ? Such ques- 
tions can only find answers through the habits and knowledge 
which come from intelligent self-study. 

Education is even more than the communication of knowledge. 
It includes the training of the sensibilities, which are the springs 
of action, and the forming and fixing of the character. To this 
the knowledge of the feelings is as requisite as the knowledge of 
the intellect, and it is attained by a similar method. 
Disciplines for S 9. We name another advantage from psycho- 

the study of lit- . . - , , . . , . , ., p xi 

erature. logical study — the training which it ensures lor the 



§ 10. PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED AND VINDICATED. 7 

appreciation and enjoyment of literature, and the increase 
facility it imparts in writing that which may be worthy to 
be read. The great masters in literature, especially in poetry* 
fiction, and the drama, have sounded the depths of the human 
soul. They have studied man in the several phases which his 
being assumes, and as moved by the many varieties of human 
feeling and passion. They may not have learned the technical 
names which are given to his capacities, or the theories which 
have been formed of the essence and powers of the soul ; but 
they have studied its thoughts and feelings to the most effectual 
purpose, and have exhibited the results of their studies in cha- 
racters of surpassing interest, and by words of wondrous power. 
From their works the student of psychology may fiud most 
valuable aid, and, to enjoy and appreciate them, there is no 
study which is so useful as the systematic study of the human 
soul, with the habits and tastes which this study engenders. No 
fact is better attested by the history of literature, than that those 
trained by such studies enjoy with especial zest the best literary 
productions, and appreciate them more keenly than any other 
class of men. Other things being equal, they are better qualified 
to criticise them fairly and intelligently. r^J 

§ 10. Psychology either furnishes or makes 
known the first principles for all those sciences which Psychology 

, , , the mother of 

either directly or remotely relate to man — which the sciences 

,.,.,. . . . ._ which relate to 

concern his being, his aspirations and wants, the 



products of his genius, his institutions, his studies, 
or his destiny. It is from psychology that all these sciences 
derive their definitions, and it is in psychology that they find 
the evidence for their truth. They all begin with certain pro- 
positions, which they assume to be true. If their truth is 
questioned, the final appeal is made to the science of the human 
soul, as the highest court, beyond which there can be no resort. 

Thus ethics, or the science of human duty, sets off with certain 
positions in respect to the nature of man, which assert that he is 
fitted for moral action, and that to right or virtuous activity he 
is impelled by the most sacred obligations. It defines conscience 
and duty, and the several relations of man, and from its defini- 
tions derives, by logical analysis and inference, the rules and 
maxims of practical ethics. But is man a moral beino- ? What 



8 INTRODUCTION. § 10. 

is it to be capable of moral activity and obligation? Is he 
endowed with conscience ? What is conscience ? These questions 
are all questions of fact, and can be answered only by the 
psychological study of man. 

Political and social science also assumes that man is a social 
being, and that he is formed for and must exist in organized 
society. It defines the rights and obligations which grow out of 
this constitution. But is man thus endowed ? and what is he as 
a social and political being ? Psychology alone can answer. 

Law, or the science of justice, lays down as its axioms certain 
assumptions in respect to the authority and limits of govern- 
ment, for the truth of which it must appeal to the consciousness 
of every one who consults his own inner life. This science is 
therefore carried back step by step, till its last footstep is firmly 
fixed in psychology. 

JEsthetics, or the science of criticism, assumes that man is 
pleased with the beautiful and elevated by the sublime; and 
that he can form distinct conceptions of what is fitted to attract 
him in both. From these conceptions he can derive rules by 
which to try and measure whatever interests him in literature, 
nature, or art. The canons of taste are in the last analysis re- 
solved by facts of psychology. 

Theology is the science of God, of man's relations to God, and 
of the will of God as made known to man. But this science, 
whatever else is true of it, must assume that man is, in his 
nature, capable of religious emotion ; as also that he believes in 
God, and can in some way understand His character and His 
will. What man believes, and how he comes to believe it, are 
in great part to be explained by psychology. Theology must 
go to psychology to vindicate its primary conceptions and 
justify its elementary principles. The science of religious 
faith and feeling must, so far as it is a science, rest on psy- 
chology. 

By these considerations, psychology is shown to be the com- 
mon parent of many of the sciences. To every one of these 
sciences the study of psychology furnishes the necessary ground- 
work, and is itself the necessary and appropriate introduction 
for the thorough understanding and orderly development of 
their teachings. 



§11. PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED AND VINDICATED. 9 

§ 11. To logic and metaphysics, psychology stands 
in a peculiar and most intimate relation, to under- its special re. 

-T,., ., ., .. «i-r» Iation to logic 

stand which special consideration is required, irsy- and metaphys- 
chology, in one aspect, is like all the sciences of 
nature, a science of observation ; and is subject to those rules 
of investigation and evidence which logic prescribes as common 
to them all. We study the soul aright when we collect and 
resolve its phenomena according to the inductive method ; when 
we reason from premises to conclusions; when we infer, by 
analogy with similar phenomena ; and when we arrange our pro- 
ducts in the order and beauty of a complete and consistent sys- 
tem. Hence it follows that psychology though necessarily, as w/3 
have seen, the parent and director of many sciences, is itself in a 
most important sense subjected to logic as its guide and law- 
giver. 

But logic is itself subject to another science, viz., metaphysics, 
or speculative philosophy, inasmuch as this is the science of 
those necessary conceptions and fundamental relations on which 
the rules and the processes of logic are founded. Such are the 
conceptions of substance and attribute, of cause and effect, of 
means and ends, and the relations of inherence, causation, and 
design. Unless these are assumed, the concept, the judgment, 
the syllogism, the inductive process and the system, can have no 
meaning and no application. Psychology is therefore subject to 
logic as its lawgiver, and logic to metaphysics as its voucher. 

But though, in the order of thought and methodical construc- 
tion, psychology is subject to these sciences, yet, in the order of 
time and of acquisition, psychology is before both of them, though 
they are fundamental to itself and to all the other sciences. 
We must, in a certain sense, go through psychology in order to 
reach the logic by which we study psychology. Logic teaches 
the laws of right thinking. But what is it to think ? What are 
the processes which it involves ? We must ask these questions, 
in order to discover and prescribe the rules of thinking. We 
can answer them only by resorting to the facts which psy- 
chology discloses. Metaphysics involves the original conceptions 
which appear in all science, and the ultimate relations which are 
assumed in the language and inquiries of all the special philoso- 
phies. But what are these original conceptions, these prime ro- 



10 INTRODUCTION. § 12. 

latioris, these categories, of which every particular assertion and 
every actual belief is only a special exemplification ? Psychology 
only can answer, as, by her analysis, she shows that in all the 
processes which man performs, he necessarily originates and ap- 
plies these conceptions and relations. By studying the mind, We 
discover the laws by which both mind and matter can be studied 
aright. By studyiug the miud, we unveil and evolve the neces- 
sary conceptions and primary beliefs, by which the mind itself 
interprets, or under which it views the universe of matter aud 
spirit. It is, then, through psychology that we reach the very 
sciences to which psychology itself is subject and amenable. 
Psychology is the starting-point from which we proceed. Psy- 
chology is also the goal to which we must return, if we retrace 
the path along which science has led us. In synthesis we begin, 
in analysis we end, with this mother of all the sciences. 

This special relation of psychology to these fundamental sciences explains 
why psychology is itself so often called philosophy and metaphysics, while it ia 
DeitLer, but simply a science of observation and of fact. It does, however, lead 
to philosophy and to metaphysics, as we have seen, by the discoveries which it 
evolves and the habits to which it trains. It is the natural introduction to meta- 
physical or philosophical studies, for its own investigations will conduct the 
mind step by step to those inquiries which will bring into view all the conceptions 
and relations, concerning the authority of which speculative intellects have dis- 
puted in all the schools. These conceptions and relations are employed in all the 
special sciences of nature, or, in the language of the ancients, in all physics, whe- 
ther the tH Qvoucd are material or spiritual. Hence it may be that all inquiries 
concerning them were called metaphysical, as beyond, or preliminary to, the 
physical, and the science was called metaphysics. Hence psychology itself was 
called philosophy, as it conducted to philosophy par Sminence, the prima philoso- 
phia, which is fundamental to all the special and applied sciences. 

§ 12. It is obvious that, if psychology holds these 
is a discipline relations to so many special sciences, the study of it 
must of itself be a most efficient discipline to 
method and logical power. 

" What is that," says Coleridge, {Tlie Friend, Sec. II., Ess. 4,'; 
" which first strikes us, and strikes us at once in a man of educa- 
tion? And which, among educated men, so instantly distin- 
guishes the man of superior mind, that (as was observed, with 
eminent propriety, of the late Edmund Burke) we cannot stand 
under the same arch-way during a shower of rain, without finding 
him out? Not the weight or novelty of his remarks: not any 



§ 14. THE RELATIONS OF THE SOUL TO MATTER. 11 

unusual interest of facts communicated by him, * * * *' 
* It is the unpremeditated and evidently habitual arrange- 
ment of his words, grounded on the habit of foreseeing, in each 
integral part, or (more plainly) in every sentence, the whole that 
he intends to communicate. However irregular and desultory 
his talk, there is method in the fragments." 

It is impossible for a person to be accustomed to reflect upon 
his own psychical states, to analyze them into their elements, to 
trace his practical maxims and his scientific axioms to their 
fundamental principles, or to evolve them from their psychologi- 
cal beginnings ; it is impossible that a man should be thus dis- 
ciplined without acquiring the power of thinking clearly, ra- 
tionally, and by orderly processes, and without also gaining the 
power to express his thoughts in a lucid and convincing manner. 
To whatever subject of investigation or business in life such a 
student may apply the discipline thus acquired, he will bring to 
it a mind capable of mastering the subject with satisfaction to 
himself and to others, and of gaining that supremacy which the 
man who thinks with order will always secure over those who 
think superficially, or who think with lack of method. 



II. 

THE RELATIONS OF THE SOUL TO MATTER. 

§ 13. Psychology is properly a branch of physics, 
in the enlarged signification of the term ; i. e., the a bra n c h of 
science of the soul is one of the many sciences of pi3Slc 
nature. Whatever may be thought of the substance of the 
soul, its phenomena are unquestioned facts. They are facts 
which are as real and as potent as the phenomena of gravitation 
or electricity. As such, they assert their p?&ce in that vast 
system of beings which we call Nature, or the Universe, and 
they claim to be considered by the methods of inquiry which ara 
appropriate to scientific investigation. 

§ 14. The true philosopher will admit the justice 
of this claim, and will proceed to consider these phe- its facts are at 
nomena in the light of scientific methods. But when by the stu- 
he begins seriously to study them, he finds, perhaps 
to his surprise, that they are very unlike the phenomena ta 



12 INTRODUCTION. § 15i 

which he has been accustomed. He discovers that the subject* 
matter of investigation, in its manifestations, forces and laws, is 
strikingly and strangely peculiar. The inquirer is surprised, 
disturbed, and perhaps offended. His first impulse is, to 
question the reality and trustworthiness of the facts themselves ; 
the next, to doubt whether they can be successfully analyzed and 
accurately defined. If it be conceded that they are actual, and 
worthy to be investigated, it is at once presumed that they may 
be attributed to some material substance or agent, or explained 
by material laws, or at lea si .1 be illustrated by material analo- 
gies. This tendency to resolve the soul into matter, or to judge 
the soul by matter, is very strong ; at times it is almost irresis- 
tible, and has in all ages exerted over the most candid and 
truth-loving minds a powerful and unconscious influence. It has 
become, therefore, almost a necessity, in an Introduction to the 
study of this science, to consider this influence distinctly, so as to 
account for its existence and to guard against its effects. For 
the same reason also it is desirable, by a preliminary discussion, 
to determine what are the relations of the soul and its phe- 
nomena to the essence, powers, and laws of matter. 

§ 15. We would first account for the existence of 
Material phe- this tendency. By the natural course of develop- 

nomena are the ,.. „ , • i ' i 

earliest known, ment and traiumg, we are for a long period exclu- 
sively occupied with material phenomena and mate- 
rial laws. What the man sees and hears and smells and tastes, 
first attracts and absorbs the attention. When he begins to re- 
flect, the objects which he compares and distinguishes, which he 
classifies and arranges, are almost exclusively sensible objects. 
When he rises to scientific knowledge, it is to the science of mate- 
rial things. The laws of mechanics, of fluids, of light, of chemi- 
cal union, of vegetable and animal life, are the laws which he 
first studies, masters, and learns to apply and to trust. It is in 
the order of nature, therefore, that the sciences of matter should 
be studied before the sciences of the soul. It follows, by a natu- 
ral and almost necessary consequence, that the conceptions and 
methods of investigation which are appropriate to material ob- 
jects, should so control the mind's habits and associations, as to 
take almost exclusive possession of them. 



5 17, THE RELATIONS OP THE SOUL TO MATTER. 13 

§ 16. When we pass over from the study of mat- 
ter to the study of spirit, the prepossessions which we ^"jjjjj* 1 ^Jjj 
have thus derived remain with us. We ask, Are the impressions. 
phenomena real ? Can they be actual and substan- 
tial when so unlike those phenomena which we see and hear, which 
we handle and taste ? But allowing that they are actual, can 
they be definitely known ? Can we compare and class them ? 
When we ask, To what substance do they pertain ? the readiest an- 
swer is, To some material substance; and the soul is readily re- 
solved into some form of attenuated matter. Its functions, also, 
are explained by the action of the animal spirits, or by chemical 
or electrical changes in the nervous substance. Perception is re- 
solved into impressions on the eye and the ear, which impressions 
are referred to motions in a vibrating fluid without, which in 
turn are responded to by motions aroused in a vibrating agent 
within. Memory and association are explained by the mutual 
attractions or repulsions of ideas similar to those to which the 
particles of matter are subjected by cohesion or electricity. 
Generalization and judgment, induction and reasoning, are re- 
solved into the frequent and often-repeated deposits of impressions 
that have some mechanical affinity for one another. 

The mind that is trained by the most liberal culture, or that is 
schooled to the most complete self-control, cannot easily divest 
itself of the prejudices and prepossessions which have been con- 
tracted by previous studies. Indeed, the man devoted to a single 
clas3 of studies or department of science is liable to stronger and 
more inveterate prejudices than he whose views have not been 
strengthened by reflection, tested by experiment, and enforced by 
authority. The man confirmed in his associations by means of a 
familiar mastery over some physical science, is the man of all 
others to whom the phenomena of the soul seem most novel and 
the conceptions most unfamiliar. 

§ 17. But it is not enough to be forewarned of These h w 
these influences, we need also to be forearmed against H set aside - In 

° what way. 

them In order to this, it is wise to take a general 
and preliminary view of the relations of the soul to matter. We 
propose to present — first, those considerations which may fairly 
be urged by and conceded to the materialist, or the materialistic 
psychologist ; and second, those which indicate and prove that the 



14 INTRODUCTION. §18. 

soul has an activity that is independent of material agents, and 
follows laws that are peculiar to itself. 

§ 18. The materialist urges, 1. That we know the 
The arguments soul only as connected with a material organization ; 

of the material- ,,.... 

1st. (i).The soul that the agent called the soul exerts all its activities 

is connected ° . . 

with a body. and mamiests ail its phenomena by means ot the 
human body. Of a soul which acts or manifests its 
acts apart from the body, we have no experience, either by per- 
sonal observation or through credible testimony. 

2. The powers of the soul are developed along 
2. The soul is with the powers and capacities of this organized 

developed with , 

the body. structure. As these powers and capacities are seve- 

rally called into action and reach their full perfec- 
tion, the powers of the soul appear, one after another, and attain 
the full measure of the energy which nature has assigned them. 
The lower organs of the body act first in order, and these are de- 
veloped and matured at the earliest period. Afterwards the 
higher organs are gradually matured and brought into action. 
After the body is completely developed for all its functions, it 
passes through certain stages of growth, increasing in size and 
strength. During these periods of development and growth the 
soul is also unfolded and matured. One power after another is 
made ready to act, and the capacity for the action of each is en- 
larged and strengthened. Because the soul is unfolded as the body 
is developed, and the soul grows with the growth of the body, 
it is urged that what we call the soul is but a name for the capa- 
cities to perform certain higher functions which belong to a finely 
organized and fully developed material organism. 

3. The soul is dependent on the body for much of 
s. is dependent its knowledge and for many of its enjoyments. It is 
its knowledge through the eye only that it perceives and enjoys 

color, and through the ear only that it apprehends 
and is delighted with sound. It is only as a mate- 
rial organ is affected by a material object, that the mind makes 
a single new acquisition concerning matter. Should these organs 
cease to exist, or cease to be acted on, all new acquisitions and 
new enjoyments would cease to be possible. Even the so-called 
higher kinds of knowledge and feeling have a nearer or remoter 
reference to the objects of sense with which we are brought in 
contact through the bodily organs. 



§ 18. THE RELATIONS OF THE SOUL TO MATTER. 15 

Moreover, so far as we know, the soul begins to act and to 
enjoy, only when these organs are aroused by their appropriate 
material excitants or stimuli; and it would never act or enjoy at 
all, either in higher or lower forms, if these organs were not 
first called into action. 

4. The soul is dependent on the body, and on 

1 , . . T i • 4. Alsoforits 

matter, for its energy and activity, it sympathizes energy and ac- 
most intimately with every change in the body. The 
capacity to fix the attention so as to perceive clearly, to remem- 
ber accurately, and to comprehend fully, varies with the condi- 
tion of the stomach and the action of the heart. A slight indis- 
position is incompatible with the performance of the simplest 
functions of the intellect, and with the exercise of those emotions 
to which the soul is most wonted. An active disease disorders 
the imagination, filling it with offensive and incongruous phanta- 
sies, which the will can neither exclude nor regulate. The suffu- 
sion of the brain with blood or water, disqualifies the soul for ac- 
tion of any kind, or stupefies it into entire unconsciousness. A 
change in the structure or in the functions of the brain, or some 
lesion of the nervous system, induces that suspension of the higher 
and regulating functions which we call insanity. This state is 
permanent when its cause is permanent; and the soul may even 
relapse from this into the condition of idiocy, from which it is 
never known to emerge. That state of the body which we call 
fainting takes away all conscious perception and enjoyment, and 
causes the soul to sink into blank inaction. Another state of the 
body in sleep induces another kind of activity, in which the usual 
laws of perception, judgment, and memory, as well as the usual 
conditions of hope and fear, seem to be deranged or reversed. 
When the organization of the body is destroyed, the soul ceases 
to act, and, for aught we can observe, it ceases to exist. 

5. The soul is the termination of a series of 

material existences, which rise above each other in a' series of ma- 
orderly gradation, each preparing the way for the ences. 
other ; and all are represented in that form of or- 
ganized matter which manifests and sustains the highest of all, 
i. e., the so-called phenomena of the soul. The lowest form of 
matter obeys mechanical laws. The form next higher is seen in 
bodies endowed with chemical properties and capable of chemi- 



16 INTRODUCTION. § 18. 

cal combinations. Here masses and molecules unlike each othoi 
unite in such a way as to form a third unlike either. In thb 
form next higher, matter disposes its particles in crystalline ar. 
rangement, according to the law of which the elements arrange 
themselves in forms more or less symmetrical, after the rules of 
a natural geometry. Next we find the lowest types of organizec 
existence, of which the crystal is the mute prophecy. In these 
from the highest to the lowest, there are separate organs, each of 
which performs a special function, necessary to the existence and 
functional activity of every other organ and to the whole structure, 
which is made up of all the organs together. The plant, when 
the requisite conditions are present of nourishment, moisture, and 
light, expands into a developed organism, thrusts out the bud 
and leaf, opens the flower by which its beauty is perfected, and 
its seed and fruit are formed and matured. The animal requires 
material conditions of food and air and light. It comes into 
being by peculiar processes, it grows into a complicated structure 
of bone, muscle, viscera, nerves, and brain, each separate organ 
fulfilling its special duty, and all acting together so as to form a 
completed whole. As the animal structure becomes more per- 
fectly and delicately organized, the phenomena of the soul 
begin to appear, requiring as their condition all the lower 
forms of nature, with the presence and action of mechanical, 
chemical, and organic powers and laws. So far also as we ob- 
serve the various grades of animal life, as is the perfection of the 
material structure so is the perfection of the soul. The more 
simple the organization, the fewer are the instincts and the more 
limited is the intelligence. The more complex and delicate the 
structure, the wider is the range and the richer the capacities for 
knowledge, enjoyment, and skill. The human being also so far 
as its development can be traced, seems to pass in succession 
through the lower up to the higher grades of organic life. It is 
first, as it were, a plant, having only vegetative existence, in the 
capacity for nourishment and growth; then it becomes an 
animal, passing through the lowest to the highest forms of 
animal existence ; last of all, it emerges into that which is still 
higher, viz., the special forms of activity, which are intelligent, sensi- 
tive, self-conscious, and rational. It would seem, it is argued, 
that the soul and the body are one organic growth. The one ia 






§ 19. THE RELATIONS OF THE SOUL TO MATTER. 11 

perfected with the other, the one depends on the other, the one 
results from the other. To this is added the consideration 
already noticed, that organic or nervous force, and psychical or 
mental force, go hand in hand in energy. 

From these analogies it is concluded that the soul 

. . n i i . i n ^ ne conclusion 

is only a convenient term for the higher forms of ?f the material- 
activity which matter exerts in its more highly or- 
ganized forms of existence. Or, t in other words, the soul, in 
its essence and its acts, is dependent on organization ; and 
when the organism is disintegrated, the activity of the soul must 
terminate. Its existence separately from organized matter, or as 
transferred to another and a new organism, involves an absurd 
and impossible conception. 

§ 19. The considerations which may be urged in 
proof that the substance of the soul is not material, Counter argu- 

1 ' ments(l). Its 

are the following : 1. The phenomena of the soul phenomena are 

° x unlike material 

are in kind unlike the phenomena which pertain to phenomena. 
matter. All material phenomena have one common 
characteristic — that they are discerned by the senses. They can 
be seen, felt, touched, tasted, and can also be weighed and mea- 
sured. But the phenomena of the soul, at least, are knoAvn by 
consciousness, and, as thus known, are directly discerned to be 
totally unlike all those events and occurrences which the senses 
apprehend. The phenomena discerned by the senses are also 
known to have some relation to space. Motion, color, taste, 
sound, combustion, breathing, circulation, secretion, galvanic 
agency, chemical combination, growth, decomposition — every 
kind and form of material activity — require extension in the sub- 
stance on which they operate, or in the effect or activity itself. 
But feeling, will, thought, memory, joy, sorrow, purpose, resolve, 
admit of no such relation to space. Even those agents in nature 
which are most imponderable and impalpable, as the electric 
force or fluid and the vital or organic force in the animal or 
plant, both require a certain portion of matter as the active ot 
potent substance which exhibits electrical or vital activity. On 
the other hand, the phenomena of the soul are by consciousness 
not only not necessarily referred to any such portion of matter, 
but they are referred to another agent, the acting or suffering 
ego, which is not known by consciousness to have any sensible or 



18 INTRODUCTION. §19. 

material attributes. These peculiarities clearly and sharply dis- 
tinguish the two classes or species of phenomena. 

2. The soul 2. The acting ego is not only not known to be in 
ftseiT^om 68 an y wa y material, but it distinguishes its own actings, 
matter. states and products, and even itself, from the material 
substance with which it is most intimately connected, from the 
very organized body on whose organization all its functions, and 
the very function of knowing or distinguishing, are said to de- 
pend. First, it distinguishes from this body every other material 
thing and object, asserting that the one is not the other. 
Second, it just as clearly, though not in the same way or on the 
same grounds, distinguishes itself and its states from the material 
objects which it discerns. It knows that the agent which sees 
and hears is not the matter which is seen and heard. Third, the 
Boul also distinguishes itself and its inner states from the organ- 
ized matter — i. e., its own bodily organs — by means of which it 
perceives and is affected by other matter. Fourth, it resists the 
force and actings of its own body, and, in so doing, most emphati- 
cally distinguishes itself as an agent from that which it resists. 
By its own activity it struggles against and opposes the coming 
on of sleep, of faintness, and of death. Even in those conscious 
acts in which it feels itself most at the disposal and control of 
the body, it recognizes its separate existence and independent 
energy. 

3. The soul 3. The soul is self-active. Matter of itself is inert. 
is seif-active. ^he soul is impelled to action from within by its own 
energy. Matter only takes a new position, or passes into a new 
state, as it is acted upon by a force from without. True, the soul 
must begin its activities with the awakening of the senses; 
but when it is once awakened, it never sleeps, so far as we can 
observe or infer. If the senses should furnish it no new objects, 
it might go on without intermitting its action, busying itself with 
the materials already furnished under laws of its own. We 
grant also that what it perceives and desires and does, is deter- 
mined, to a very great extent, by the objects which present them- 
selves from without ; but these direct the course of its action by 
furnishing it objects ; they do not cause it to act. We concede 
even that its energy in action is dependent on material condi- 
tions, as the tension and healthful harmony of the nervous sys- 



§ 19. THE RELATIONS OF THE SOUL TO MATTER. 1£ 

tem. When the nerves are relaxed or disturbed, as in fainting 
or disease, the force of the soul is greatly weakened or frightfully- 
disordered ; but there is no proof that any bodily conditions can 
arrest psychical activity after it has once been aroused. In thi* 
respect the contrast is striking between matter and spirit. 

4. To very many of the states of the soul no changes 
or affections of the organism can be observed or traced, pendent on 

° m m matter in it* 1 

as their conditions or prerequisites. It is argued that highest ac- 

x x . ° tivities. 

the soul and body are one material organism, because 
we know that in many iu stances some affection of the one is ne- 
cessary as the condition of a correspondent affection of the other; 
e. g. } the soul cannot see unless the retina is painted by the light, 
nor can it hear unless the ear vibrates through sound. It ought 
greatly to weaken the force of this argument, to observe that the 
change in the soul is in its nature wholly unlike the conditions 
which go before it. The impression on the eye or the ear has no 
affinity with or likeness to the perception which follows. More- 
over, the condition in the organism is often a condition only so 
far as to furnish an object which the soul apprehends, i. e., the 
eye sees rather than hears, and sees this object rather than 
another, because the excited organism furnishes the object matter 
or occasion. The conclusiveness of the argument is entirely broken, 
when we reflect that no changes whatever in the organism are 
known to precede or to condition the most numerous and the 
most important psychical states and affections. We grant that 
the landscape which we see must first be pictured on the retina. 
But what change or affection of the material organism occurs, 
when the soul, at the sight of this landscape, images another like 
it, calls up by memory a similar scene, which had been seen years 
before a thousand miles distant, or, by creative acts of its own, 
constructs picture after picture that are more beautiful and 
varied than the one it is beholding? Or what bodily changes 
precede desire and disgust, hope and fear, at these memories and 
creations ? No such changes have ever been discerned. No 
ground is furnished for surmising that they ever occur. They 
must occur in every instance, to justify the theory of the material^ 
ist. That they do occur is simply assumed. They have neve* 
been observed. 



20 INTRODUCTION. § 19. 

5. The regular gradation in the arrangement of the 

5. Gradation , & _ .? . . & 

of existence several kinds of material existences, and the progres- 

does not prove . , , „ -, ■, . -, P « 

the soul to be sive development irom the lower to the higher forms of 
organized matter, do not of themselves prove that the 
soul is matter in a more highly organized form. Nor does the 
fact that the transition from the highest forms of organized mat- 
ter to the lowest types of psychical activity cannot be readily dis- 
criminated ; nor that the body, which is organized for the uses of 
the soul, seems in its development to assume in successive order 
all the lower types of organization, force us to believe that a 
common substance, obeying material laws, is capable of rising into 
that refinement of organization which can perform the functions 
of knowledge and affection. 

These facts can only be regarded as proof by the man who 
assumes that the existence of immaterial or spiritual being is im- 
possible, and the belief of it is unphilosophical. This assumption 
involves the inference that there is no spiritual Creator. If 
there be a creating Spirit, who originated and controls matter, 
then it is not unphilosophical to believe that there may be a 
created spirit, which is intimately connected with and affected 
by a material organism, or which, perhaps, is itself the organizing 
agent. 

To those who assume that there can be no creating Spirit, it is 
useless to attempt to prove that there may be spirit that is ere- 
ated. To those who admit that there is or may be a creating 
Spirit, or even to those who believe that design has a place in the 
universe, the regularity of development and progressive transition 
from one being to another simply indicate a unity of plan in the 
creation more clearly and more satisfactorily rather than prove a 
unity of substance in the agent. It may be impossible for us to 
draw the line where material organization ends and spiritual 
agency begins, where unconscious reaction ceases and conscious 
activity emerges. But we know enough to affirm that if spiritual 
existence is possible, and if it be necessary from its constitution 
«r important to its destiny that it be developed with or organize 
matter, then all those phenomena by which it seems to rise by a 
natural evolution from the higher forms of matter, and to crown 
vfie series which it terminates as "the bright consummate 
grower," are fully explained by the unity, the beauty, and the 



§ 21. THE RELATIONS OF THE SOUL TO MATTER. 21 

harmony of the Creator's plan, and do not require a unity of sub- 
stance. 

This is all that needs to be determined at the present stage of our 
inquiries. What the substance of the soul is, and what its des- 
tiny, can be fully denned and vindicated by the philosophy 
and theology to which psychology is the appropriate intro- 
duction. 

§ 20. It is important to remember, however, that 
whatever views we accept ot the nature 01 the soul, na ot the soul 
its phenomena are as real as any other, and their 
peculiarities are entitled to a distinct recognition by the true 
philosopher. Whatever psychical properties or laws can be 
established on appropriate evidence, they all deserve to be ac- 
cepted as among the real agencies and laws of the actual uni- 
verse. Perception, memory, and reasoning are processes which 
are as real as gravitation and electrical action. In one as- 
pect their reality is more worthy of confidence and respect, as 
it is by means of perception and reasoning that we know gravita* 
tion and electricity. 

§ 21. The analogy of the physical sciences estab- Phenomena A 
lishes the principle, that facts of one sort are not to ™ e j^J^TTy 
be distrusted because they differ in kind or quality j*j°JJ of an ~ 
from those of another class. Phenomena of one 
description are not to be resolved by laws that hold good of those 
of another. Chemical facts and laws are not disputed because 
they cannot be explained by mechanical properties and powers. 
The functions by which the plant is nourished and grows are not 
to be doubted because they cannot be explained by the laws 
which regulate the rise of water in a pump, or those which unite 
an acid or an oil with an alkali into a salt or a soap. The cir- 
culation of the blood, and the digestion of the food, are not to be 
questioned, or violently explained by laws which do not solve 
them, because they exhibit special and novel activities, and must 
be interpreted by peculiar methods. We are indeed prompted 
to reduce all our knowledge to unity, and we therefore seek to 
explain two events and two classes of phenomena, if it is possible, 
by a single agency and after a single law. We must prefer the 
well-known and the familiar to the unknown and the untried ; 
but if we do not succeed, we may not for this reason doubt the 



22 INTRODUCTION. § 2Z 

facts or misconstrue their laws. If any of the phenomena con* 
cerning man which are discerned by consciousness alone 
happen to be newly observed, — if their truth is established 
through consciousness — then they are to be received as real, 
whether they are or are not like the phenomena of matter, or 
whether they can or cannot be explained by the laws or analogies 
which material phenomena illustrate and exemplify. To deny 
them, is unphilosophical. To attempt to explain them by any 
resort to physical analogies which fail to solve them, or which 
destroy their integrity or essentially alter their character, is to be 
more unphilosophical still. If either class of phenomena should 
take precedence of and give law to the other, the spiritual 
should stand before the material, for the reasons which have been 
already given. 
m § 22. We ought also to distinguish between the 

The phenom- ° 9 

ena, and lan- powers and laws which consciousness- discovers, and 

guage in which 

they are de- the medium by which these discoveries are recorded 
and made known. This medium is language, in the 
large acceptation of the term — the language of signs, of looks, 
and of words. The most superficial inspection of the words 
which describe the thoughts and feelings, reveals the fact conclu- 
sively that they were all originally appropriated to material ob- 
jects and to physical phenomena, The words perceive, under- 
stand, imagine, disgust, disturb, adhere, and a multitude besides, 
were all originally applied to some material act or event. It is 
only by a secondary or transferred signification that they stand 
for the states or acts of the soul. 

Locke well observes on this point, (Essay, B. iii., c. 1, § 5) :— • 
" It may lead us a little toward the original of all our notions 
and knowledge, if we remark how great a dependence our words 
have on common, sensible ideas ; and how those which are made 
use of to stand for actions and notions quite removed from sense, 
have their rise from thence, and from obvious sensible ideas are 
transferred to more abstruse significations, and made to stand for 
ideas that come not under the cognizance of our senses ; e- g , to 
imagine, apprehend, comprehend, adhere, conceive, instil, disgust, 
disturbance, tranquillity, etc., are all words taken from the opera- 
tions of sensible things, and applied to certain modes of think- 
ing. Spirit, in its primary signification, is breath ; angel, a mes* 



§ 23. THE RELATIONS OF THE SOUL TO MATTER. 23 

senger ; and I doubt not but if we could trace them to their 
sources, we should find in all languages the names which stand 
for things that fall not under our senses to have had their first 
rise from sensible ideas." 

§ 23. The physical analogon which led to the 
selection of the word often lurks behind its psychical fluence of g ian- 
Import, and is ready suddenly to spring out before SUage " 
the eyes, and not unfrequently to suggest erroneous and mis- 
chievous conclusions. Let the word impression be used, as it 
frequently is, for some affection of the intellect or the emotions, 
and it is conceived and reasoned of as involving some pressure or 
impulse. A mental image is taken to be a literal drawing 01 
picture that is painted on the ' presence-chamber ' of the soul, or 
can be restored or re-illuminated by the memory. The objects 
of the external world are said to be out of the mind, while the 
image or remembrance is said to be in it ; as though the soul 
filled a portion of space, and disposed its thoughts within its 
walls or limits. The memory is conceived as a storehouse of 
facts, dates, or principles, all ready to be taken down or drawn 
out when required. Consciousness is thought and reasoned of 
as though it were an inner light, which illumines by its radiance 
the dark and winding recesses of the world within. Conscience 
is the voice of God, speaking with the distinctness and authority 
of audible speech. 

When we reflect on the import of such terms in their applica- 
tion to the soul, we readily assent to the proposition that they 
are metaphors, either fresh or faded. But we do not always ob- 
serve, nor do we always guard against the insidious influence of 
the image from which the metaphor was taken. When w 7 e are 
occupied with the thought, and not with the word — when we are 
reasoning earnestly, or seeking a solution which evades us, the 
material image may supply a suggestion which is more plausible 
than valid, and this will lead to a conclusion which is mislead- 
ing. In such cases we reason and infer, not from what we think 
or know, but from what we say ; and the very language which 
we use to define and steady our thinking, confuses and distracts 
it. Inasmuch as all the language which we use is materialistic in 
its origin and structure, it will incidentally favor those views of 
the soul which are materialistic, either as professed theories oi 



24 INTRODUCTION, § 25. 

insensible associations. The history of psychology is a perpetual 
testimony to the truth, that materialistic conceptions and theo- 
ries find their readiest justification in the terms which the most 
thorough spiritualist is forced to employ, and that a quasi ma- 
terialism seems to spring out of the very language by which it is 
confuted. Hence it becomes so important that the conceptions 
"which we form should be sharply distinguished from the lan- 
guage in which they are uttered ; and that the student of psy- 
chology should place himself ever on his guard against the in- 
fluence of the images and associations which are continually put 
into his mouth by the language which the necessities of his 
being force him to use ; which language, however high it may 
soar into the spiritual, can never free itself from the matter in 
which all its terms have their origin. 



III. 

TIIE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. 



Question con 

cerui 

ulties. 



§ 24. We assume, as has been already stated, that 
n g "thefac- the soul is endowed with the capacity to know its 
own phenomena. Reserving for future consideration 
the nature, the development, and the authority of this power, we 
proceed to apply it in inquiring what consciousness finds to be 
true of the soul, as to its phenomena, their conditions and laws. 

The inquiry which comes first in order is the following : Do 
we find by consciousness that the soul is endowed with separate 
faculties or powers ? This question is preliminary to all others, 
for it must be answered, to direct our classification, and fix our 
terminology. 

§ 25. We answer, first, negatively. The soul is 
pSteSor^JS not divided into separate parts or organs, of which 
one may be active while the others are at rest. The 
plant and the animal have distinct and separate organs, of which 
each performs its appropriate and peculiar function, which none 
of the others can fulfil. The root, the bark, the leaf, the flower, 
in the one, and the stomach, the heart, the skin, and the eye, in 
the other, each performs an office which is peculiar to itself. 
While one of these organs is active, the others may be as ye* un- 



§ 26. THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. 25 

developed or in a state of comparative repose. There is no evi- 
dence of the division of the soul into any such organs. The 
whole soul, so far as we are conscious of its operations, acts in 
each of its fuuctions. The identical and undivided ego is present, 
and wholly present, in every one of its conscious acts and states. 

This peculiarity of the soul has not always been noticed as it 
should be ; certainly it has not always been kept in mind. The 
30-called faculties have often been conceived and described as 
separable organs or parts of the soul's substance, any one of 
which might act of itself — nay, one or another of which might 
be conceived as added to or superinduced upon another, giving 
so much enlarged and diverse capacity. Sometimes the faculties 
have been represented as acting not only apart from one another, 
but apart from the conscious soul itself; the soul being conceived 
now as an arena or show-place within which the faculties prose- 
cute their work or play, the soul being impassive and incogni- 
zant ; or now as a spectator of their doings, more or less indiffer- 
ent or interested. These representations are all derived from the 
analogies furnished by matter and its actings ; they find no war- 
rant in our conscious experience. 

Again, we do not find it true that the soul can --.„■' 

» » Each faculty 

onlv act with one of its so called faculties at the does not act at 

J , a separate time- 

same instant of time. Some suppose, — perhaps infer- 
ring from a misconstruction of the doctrine of the faculties, — that 
when we know, feel and decide, or when we perceive, remember 
and judge, we must perform each of these separate acts in a defi- 
nite and distinctly separable instant of time. Consciousness 
does not allot to each distinguishable kind of activity a separate 
interval or moment of duration, but before its eye many such 
are united in one undivided act. 

§ 26. We ask next, what facts authorize the 
conception and the use of the term faculty ? We as- gou { at are° like 
sume that the identical ego, or i", is not only dis- *Qo t ™ r Uke ° n * 
tinguishable from its own states, but that each of 
these states is separated or individualized from every other, by 
occupying a separate portion of time. Each of these states is 
known by the soul's consciousness to be individually different 
from every other. But though they are thus divided, they are 
united by other relations, as follows — 



26 INTRODUCTION. § 26. 

Their elements First, their prominent elements are known to be 

are like and . 1M . . 

unlike in quai- alike or unlike m the immediate experience of the 
soul. The person who is the subject of each, knows 
that what he calls his acts of knowledge are alike, and also that 
they differ from his states of feeling and of will, as readily and 
as clearly as he distinguishes blue from red, or green from violet, 
or hard from soft, or bitter from sweet. 

They are de- Second, the elements which are the grounds of the 
Ehe Q r. oaone classification of the several states are not only re- 
cognized as like or unlike, but each has a relation of 
dependence with respect to the others. Not only is one state 
different from another, as a so-called state of knowledge, feeling, 
or will, but the element of knowledge is known to be the neces- 
sary condition of the element of feeling, and the element of 
feeling the condition of that of will. A man does not feel, except 
he knows or apprehends some object which excites feeling. He 
always feels about or with respect to something cognized. 

When he would increase or intensify an emotion, he applies 
the intellect to the appropriate object with greater energy and a 
more exclusive concentration. When he would excite the 
feeling anew, he brings the object before the attentive intellect a 
second time. When he would rid himself of an emotion, or 
prevent its return, he occupies the attention with some other 
object, so as to excite an emotion that shall exclude or displace 
the first. There is a similar dependence in the acts or states of 
the will. To choose, we must not only know, but we must also 
feel. If an object could be simply known, and excite no feeling, 
it could neither be chosen nor rejected. 

Third, each act or state of the soul is cha- 

One element is , _ . . 

preponderant ractenzed and distinguished by the presence and pre- 

in each state. . ° . x x 

dommance 01 some one ot the single elements which 
we have named. That is, each state of the soul is more con- 
spicuously and eminently a state of knowledge, feeling, or will ; 
some one of these elements being prevailing aud predominant. 
It is natural and normal for the soul to blend all in one, and by 
the laws of its self-active- nature, to spring at once into all these 
forms of its appropriate energy. At every instant of its being 
it should leap as by a single bound, along the completed curv* 
of its several capacities. Sometimes its course seems to be ai* 



§ 27. THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. 27 

rested ; often it seems to be detained in a single element ; most 
usually, we may almost say invariably, one only is prominent to 
the eye of consciousness, the other elements being scarcely 
noticed as present at all. We distinguish, remember, and name 
such a state by the predominating feature or element. We 
think of and call it a state of knowledge, feeling, or wilL 
We observe, too, the appropriate characteristics of the function 
which prevails, because a single element is conspicuous in each 
particular state. 

§ 27. These considerations prove that the several 
states of the soul are strikingly distinguished as like fined. General 
or unlike. The capacity of the soul for any one of 
these distinguishable kinds of activity we call a faculty. We do 
this for the same reason that we ascribe or refer any material 
effect or phenomenon to a special power as its source or cause. 
One ore of iron exhibits magnetic agency, and produces magnetic 
effects. To another these are wholly wanting. To the one we 
ascribe, to the other we deny the magnetic power. On the same 
ground, if there were no other, we might interpret psychical 
effects by referring each to a special psychical power, which we 
call a faculty. 

But we have higher authority for recognizing 
special faculties in the sphere of spirit, than for ad- thodty? 
mitting determinate powers in the world of matter. 
Of material agencies we perceive nothing but the effects. Of 
the states and effects of the soul, we are conscious that we are 
the proffers. In the one case, we stand before the curtain and 
see the result, which we ascribe to an agency whose arrangement 
and working we cannot directly inspect. In the other case, we 
are ourselves behind the scenes, and observe the working, i£ 
indeed, we do not ourselves work the machinery. To certain of 
these actions, issuing in certain results, we are prompted by no 
effort at all. We cannot by any effort prevent ourselves from per- 
forming them, and we ascribe them to the nature or constitution 
of the soul. Hence, with eminent propriety, we connect with 
such acts the term faculty, from faeilitas, as explained by Cicero*. 
" Famttates sunt, aut quibus facilius fit, aut sine quibus aliquid 
wnfici non potest." — Cic. Inv. t 1, 27, 41. 



28 INTRODUCTION. § 29. 

, , . § 28. We call the faculties thus ascertained, the 

These faculties 

common to ail human faculties. We do so, because certain states of 
the soul, and certain elements of these states, are be- 
lieved to be alike in all human beings. No soul is truly human 
in which they are not present. The exercise and experience of 
them is necessary to every perfectly constituted and fully devel- 
oped human being. They may not all be active in an infant of 
a few days old, but they are sure to become so, if the infant lives 
and nothing interferes with its normal development. But when 
we say that the soul must possess these p^ ,/ers in order to be hu- 
man, we do not assert that any two human beings possess them 
in the same proportion, or exercise them with the same energy. 
All men perceive, remember, and reason ; but all men do not per- 
ceive with the same quickness and accuracy, nor do all men re- 
member with the same readiness and reach, nor do they reason 
with equal certainty and discrimination. The sensibilities of 
some men are obtuse, and of others are acute. The choices and 
practical impulses of men differ most of all. In these, each man 
is preeminently himself, sharing in no sense his individuality with 
any other human being. 

The faculties § 29. In these natural and original differences, the 

dent in of ei oae~ faculties are not altogether independent one of 
another. another. A powerful intellect, to be developed into 

its normal attainment, needs to be stimulated by strong feelings 
and to be held and directed by a determined will. Nature 
usually provides for the possibility of such a development, by 
proportioning the several endowments of the soul to one another. 
Hence, a man superior in intellect is usually superior in the 
capacity for energetic feeling and effective decision. If there be 
a marked disproportion between any one and the others, we ob- 
serve it as irregular and unnatural. 

This truth needs to be observed in the development of the soul, 
by special methods of discipline or plans of education. The 
whole soul must be educated in the harmony of its powers, or it 
cannot be successfully educated in any single one. The intellect 
cannot be trained to superior activity or successful achievement 
except as the feelings are stimulated to a strong interest for the 
objects to which the intellect is applied, or the ends for which it 
acts. The will must be taught to concentrate and fix the encr- 



§ 30 THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. 29 

gies, and to direct them to harmonious and successful activity. 
We cannot, if we would, train a single power alone. When we 
seem to bestow all our power upon one only — as the intellect — in 
the education of ourselves or of others, we are always, in fact, act- 
ing upon the whale soul, in exciting new habits or kindling new 
aspirations. 

§ 30. These truths also strikingly illustrate the The unity of 
organic unity and the eminent individuality of the the souL 
soul. We need ever to be mindful of this. Science seeks after 
resemblances, and thus is continually impelled to overlook differ- 
ences. Or, if science notices differences, it is the differences by 
which species are distinguished, not those by which individuals 
are separated. With those individual peculiarities which refuse 
to be classed with any other under some common conception, 
science disdains to concern itself. All objects in Nature have in 
some sense an individual unity, which science cannot wholly mas- 
ter and resolve ; but the soul is more intensely and eminently 
one and individual than any other. 

We say a piece of iron, or any mere aggregate or Different una* 
mass, is one, when its constituent particles or atoms of uulty- 
are permanently held together by adhesive attraction. The law 
of chemical affinity makes two unlike substances into a third un- 
like either, which is eminently one by the completeness of the 
interpenetration and combination. A plant is one, so long as its 
several organs act together, and the functions of each conspire 
with the functions of every other to the common existence and 
the developed growth of the whole. The unity of the plant 
arises from the action of each of these organs with and upon 
every other, and the united action of the whole through the in- 
tegrity of an undivided structure. The same is true, only more 
strikingly and eminently, of the living animal. The animal 
ceases to be one when its structure is divided, because the reci- 
procal action of its several organs is thereby forever rendered im- 
possible. 

But the soul is one in a higher sense than the plant n 

° l Psychical 

or the animal can be. It has, indeed, no material unity' is the 

' • . highest of all. 

structure, the visible and tangible bond of its mate- 
rial organs. Its faculties are dependent on one another by a 
union so intimate, that the soul cannot act with one except as it 



30 INTRODUCTION. § 31. 

also acts with the others. It cannot grow in the capacity or 
energy of one except as it grows in the energy of the others. 
Above all, the soul, in all its conscious activity, refers these vari- 
ous forms of action, thus interdependent on each other, to a single 
central agent. It knows its unity, in a large portion of its direct 
experience. It is not more certain that it acts in various ways, 
each intimately related to one another, than it is that one person, 
the undivided and self-conscious ego, acts in all these ways. First, 
this ego knows, in all its varieties of cognition, and all the variety 
of objects which it can apprehend. It also feels, as variously in 
the quality and intensity of this kind of subjective experience as 
its subjective and objective conditions allow. But it is by its 
actings in choice, or as the will, that its individuality is preemi- 
nently known to itself and by itself to be one, as it makes itself to 
be what it is by its individual acts. 

It is true that each soul is like every other soul in those 
powers by which it is human. It is unlike every other, not only 
in the proportion of the faculties and attainments which are com- 
parable to those minuter shadings of form and properties in the 
individual plant or animal which are beyond the reach of the 
classifying power, but also in the conscious and necessary refer- 
ence of every action to the individual ego. It is preeminently 
one, as by its own self-activity it gives to each act of its volun- 
tary and rational life a direction and energy which it shares with 
no other being and no other act of its own being. 

§ 31. But though the soul in these respects is pre- 
fxciude° e com- eminently one, it is not thereby single in the sense of 
excluding a complex organization. Rather do its 
unity and individuality depend upon and require a complex 
organism of faculties and powers. We observe that, in all organ- 
isms, the more complicated the structure is, the more conspicuous 
is the individuality. Just in proportion as the structure is com«= 
plex in its organs and in the variety of its possible functions, just 
in that proportion is there the possibility of an unshared individ- 
uality, by means of the greater number of particulars in which 
no other single being can be like this one. But the more largely 
complex the soul is in the wealth of its known and its yet unre 
vealed endowments, the more strikingly is its unity illustrated in 
the working of these endowments with one another to the pro* 



§ 32. THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. 31 

gressive development and increasing power of a single living 
being. But its unity is conspicuous in the circumstance, that the 
being refers this increase of knowledge, skill, and moral capacity 
to itself, through its conscious knowing, feeling, and choosing. 
The dignity of the soul is shown by its varied adaptations to the 
universe of matter, life, and spirit, and by its capacity to respond 
to and interpret this complex universe by its answering powers, 
(but most of all, in that it can distinguish itself, as the one agent, 
and patient, from everything which it observes or cares for. 

§ 32. The powers of this complex yet individual 
soul with which our science is concerned, are those Power f of tha 

' soul, threefold 

only which are manifested through its conscious acts 
or states. All the other powers are left unconsidered, except so 
far as they incidentally relate to these conscious exercises or ex- 
periences. These conscious acts or states are separated into three 
broad and general divisions of states of knowledge, states of feel- 
ing, and states of will. To know, to feel, and to choose, are the 
most obviously distinguishable states of the soul. These are re- 
ferred to three faculties, which are designated as The Intellect, The 
Sensibility, and The Will. 

This threefold division of the powers of the conscious ego is 
now universally adopted by those who accept any division or 
doctrine of faculties. It has taken the place of the twofold divi- 
sion which formerly prevailed, into the understanding and the 
will; according to which the sensibility, or the soul's capacity 
for emotion, was included under the will, and the affections, as 
they were usually called, were regarded as phenomena of the 
will. 

Aristotle divided the powers of the soul into the vegetative, the perceptive 
^including the phantasy), the locomotive, the impulsive or orectic (including the 
iffectional and emotional), and the no etic^ All these, except the noetic, were 
:hared by the brutes. The Nov? was divine, perhaps preexistent and imperish- 
able. Cf. Be Gen., et Cor. ii. 3; Be An. iu. 5. The distinction of body, soul, 
and spirit, as we have already noticed, was nearly coincident with this, though 
more general, and recognized under the Uvevixa special relations to the Divine 
Spirit. The schoolmen retained this division, and distinguished three classes of 
Bouls, as follows : the vegetative, of plants, the vegetative and perceptive, of ani- 
mals, the; vegetative, perceptive and rational, of man. Each of the last two 
have the impulsive and locomotive. 

The moderns, throwing out of their classification the powers not apprehended 
In consciou3ness, redueed the remainder to two : the intellectual and impulsive. 



32 INTRODUCTION. § 32. 

or the powers of the understanding and the powers of the will. This classified 
tion was a long time current. 

Aristotle had recognized under the orectic, or impulsive powers — the powers 01 
the will, which we have noticed — a threefold subdivision: imOvfiCa, Ov^os, povAnct?. 
Theologians had for a long period distinguished the affections and the will and 
zealously discussed the relations of the one to the other. Locke carefully and 
earnestly distinguished will from desire, without, however, proposing a threefold 
division of the powers. (Essay B. II. c. 21, $$ G, 30, 31.) Reid does substan- 
tially the same inasmuch as he retains the received division in its accepted import 
in his Intellectual Poioera, Essay I., c. 7 ; but in his Active Powers, Essay II., c's 
1 and 2, he limits the will to the capacity to determine or choose, excluding from 
it the capacity for both emotion and desire. Dugald Stewart (Active and Moral 
Powers), following Reid, adopted a threefold classfiication without its formal 
nomenclature. But Dr. Thomas Brown goes backward from all, distinctly assert- 
ing that the will is a modification of desire, and a volition is only the strongest, 
or prevailing desire. Inquiry, etc., p. 1, \ 3. Kant subdivided the impulsive and 
orectic into two, viz., feeling and desire. Kritik d. Urtheils- Kraft, Einleitung 
and Anthropologic Prof. T. C. Upham distinguishes the power of the soul 
formally, as intellect, sensibility, and will. 

Hamilton divided the powers of the soul into the faculties of knowledge, capa- 
cities of feeling, and powers of conation — i. e., of desire and will. Desire and 
will he distinguished respectively as a blind or fatal, and a free or deliberate ten- 
dency to act. (Met. Lect. XI.) 

Among modern writers, Herbart and his school have made them- 
Modern oppo- selves conspicuous by rejecting the doctrine of faculties of the soul 
t j efl< ' in general, and of the intellect in particular, as inconsistent with 

the essential unity of the soul, and as self-contradictory in both 
conception and statement. But Herbart insists most earnestly that the soul pos- 
sesses a capacity for self-assertion, and that these self-assertions vary both in 
kind and degree with the conditions which call them forth. His doctrine is not 
unlike that of Leibnitz respecting monads of all classes, and preeminently of the 
conscious monads, that they represent or reflect all other objects, and that in this 
individual capacity lies their individual being. But diverse capacities for these 
varying self-assertions, or, in modern terminology, for 'reactions/ involves all 
that is essential, and we may add, all that is objected to in the doctrine of 
'faculties;' the one being no more incompatible with the soul's unity than is the 
other. 

Herbart, moreover, affirms of the ideas — ' Vorstellungen ' — all that he denies to 
faculties, giving them the power to act and react on each other in such a variety 
of ways, and with independent energies, as to explain all the varying psychical 
phenomena. Whilo ho contends most earnestly that the soul is one — a monad 
without relations to space — he makes it the theatre, literally the ' show-place,' of 
«11 manner of active and antagonistic agents, which are evolved from its own 
doing by the objects that excite them. 

The associational and cerebral psychologists reject the doctrine of faculties as 
commonly received, and resolve all the operations and products of the soul into 
the single power of association between its ideas, this being in their view the 
single function cither of the soul or its ideas, and that into which all its remain- 
tag powers and activities may bo resolved. 



§ 34. THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. 33 

§ 33. We call these endowments of the soul facul- 
ties, powers, capacities, with some difference of mean- FacnI ^ powaq 
ing and application for each. 

Faculty is properly limited to the endowments which are natu= 
rai to man and universal with the race. We also limit the term, 
by a sense of natural propriety, to those endowments which are 
especially spiritual, and which manifest the independent and 
higher energy of the soul. 

The word power is applied to the active properties of material 
objects, as well as to those which pertain to spirit. Originally it 
was employed by Aristotle in contradistinction to act. Hence, 
power and action are always contrasted, and beings are always 
contemplated by him as iv dovd/ist and iv htpyia. Force is quite 
as frequently used as power, of material objects and agents, and 
in the collective sense, the forces of nature are more frequently 
spoken of than its powers. When power is applied to the soul, 
it is used in a larger signification than faculty ; for by it we 
designate the capacities w r hich are acquired, as well as those 
which are original. All men are said to be endowed with the 
faculty of memory. A few are said to have, or to have attained 
to, the power of remembering with surprising reach and accu- 
racy « All men have the faculty of sense-perception, but seamen 
gain the power of seeing objects at a very great distance. 

Capacity signifies greater passiveness or receptivity than either 
of the others. Hence it is more usually applied to that in the 
soul by which it does or can suffer, or to dormant and inert possi- 
bilities of being aroused to exertions of strength or skill, or of 
making striking advances through education and habit. 

§ 34. The normal operations of each of these 

• m • Function, 

faculties are called its, functions. The term is taken state, pheno- 
from the action of the bodily organs. From these it 
'is transferred to organs in the metaphorical sense, as the ' organs 
of government,' and the ' functions ' which they perform. In 
both these applications it has come to mean, first, the appro- 
priate operations of each, and then the activities to which they 
are appointed, or destined. This signification appears when the 
term is applied to the activities of the powers of the soul. In this 
use it is assumed that there are activities for which the soul is 
designed — modes of operations which are adapted, or conduce to, 

2* 



34 INTRODUCTION. § 35. 

the end of its being. Hence the normal activities of these 
powers are called functions. 

States of the soul are often spoken of. The phrase has passed 
into current if not into technical use. Strictly interpreted, it 
would designate the more permanent or enduring, as contrasted 
with the more transient phenomena. It has com?, however, tc 
mean any conditions of the soul whatever. 

Phenomenon is used as properly of spiritual as of material 
beings or agents. Literally, it means that which appears to, or 
is known directly by the senses : next that which is known as a 
fact by the mind. In science, it signifies more precisely that 
which is known as a fact, in distinction from its explanation by 
a force, principle, or law. Whether this explanation has or has 
not yet been attained, makes no difference. Whatever is or is 
not yet explained, when viewed solely as a fact, is called a phe- 
nomenon. The English word appearance carries with it the 
meaning, or at least the suggestion, of unreality. It often means 
and is understood as a mere appearance, a possible illusion. No 
such signification belongs to phenomenon, as a technical term 
"Shat has become established in psychical as well as in material 
teience, to signify an observed fact or event. 



IV. 

IS PSYCHOLOGY A SCIENCE, AND WHAT ARE ITS PRINCIPLES 
AND METHODS? 

§ 35. In the preceding chapters we have impliedly 
psfchoS-y ; it answered these questions. In the subsequent ex- 
science^^n'd amination of consciousness they will be discussed 
^duc'ttm 6 ° f more full y> and also the nature and authority of 
psychological science. 
Our own theory may be briefly stated, thus: The facts or 
materials with which psychology has to do are derived primarily 
from consciousness. These materials psychology seeks to ar- 
range in a scientific method, and to explain by scientific princi- 
ples. At the same time physiology comes to the aid of con- 
sciousness, by furnishing a knowledge of the functions and states 
of the body which prepare the objects of the sense-perceptions, 
and are the essential conditions of the development and tb$ 



§ 36. IS PSYCHOLOGY A SCIENCE ? 35 

activities of the soul. Both these classes of facts must be con- 
sidered in conjunction, must be observed with attention, must be 
analyzed into their ultimate elements, must be compared, classed, 
and interpreted according to the methods which are common to 
all tha inductive sciences. 

So far it would seem that psychology is truly an inductive 
Bcience. It is distinguished however by two striking peculiari- 
ties. First. Its subject-matter is attested by consciousness to be 
sui generis, consisting of phenomena which cannot be resolved 
into material entities or agents, and cannot always be subjected 
to or judged by analogies furnished by material agents, pheno- 
mena, or laws. Second. This subject-matter is in part the 
function of knowledge itself, the very agency by which all 
scientific knowledge is produced, whether of matter or of the 
mind. This special and fundamental function, psychology must 
■examine, in its various processes, and their products. By this 
peculiar feature, the science of the human soul involves the 
scientific study of the principles and laws of all knowledge 
whatsoever, and of each one of the sciences. In every other 
feature except this, psychology takes rank with the other induc- 
tive sciences, and is co-ordinate with them in its subjection to a 
common method. But by this last feature it becomes in a sense 
the arbiter of them all, as it tries and tests the methods and 
principles common to them all, itself included. While, then, 
psychology is an inductive science, with a subject-matter of its 
own, it is also in a certain sense, the science of induction itself. 
It requires us to find, and in a sense to justify the fundamental 
principles of all the sciences, by showing that such principles 
exist, and demand verification. So far as psychology concerns 
itself with the explanation of these principles, it is the science 
of sciences, the Prima Philosophia. 

These views arc very generally received m respect to the nature of psychology 
as a science, in answer to the question whether such a science is possible. The 
opinions of those who dissent from them may be classed as follows : 

$ SG. A very large number of persons deny that psychology can 
ever become a science, because of the vagueness and uncertainty Some hold psy- 
of its subject-matter. Science, they allege, knows nothing of vaen<Pto bo 
powers, either in matter or in spirit. It does not concern itself a science, 
with the constituents of things, or with the essence and ultimate 
properties of matter or spirit. It has to do with phenomena only, and it seeks 
to learn the order and laws of their occurrence by definite statements concerning 



36 INTRODUCTION. § 38. 

their mathematical relations. Force is measured by number; so is the quantity 
of matter; so are pressure, motion, attraction, and repulsion, in short, every 
thing with which science, as such, has to do. The range of science proper, they 
contend, is limited within the domain where mathematical relations apply, and 
cannot include the facts of psychology to any effective or valuable result. 

It is sufficient to say in reply, that this view of scientific knowledge, would 
exclude the science of life in all its forms as truly as the science of the soul. It 
proves too much, and therefore cannot be true. Science does inquire after the 
powers, the conditions, and causes of phenomena, as truly as it concerns itself 
with the mathematical relations of either. Besides, it is always pertinent to ob, 
serve, that the power by which we are impelled to seek, and by which we attain 
scientific knowledge, is the only authority for our confidence in science itself. 
To distrust the possibility of exact and determinate knowledge of the conditions 
and laws of this power, is to distrust the authority of science. If the soul, as the 
agent of science, cannot itself be known in its processes and their results, then 
the processes have no value, and the products no binding force. 

§ 37. The materialists of every sort contend that a science of 
The material- the soul is possible and real, because the substance of the soul is 
psychology material, and its phenomena can therefore all be explained by the 

laws and relations of matter. Their cardinal axiom is: there is 
nothing substantially existent in the universe except what has extension and sen- 
sible properties. The phenomena of the soul must therefore be the manifestations 
or actings of an existence of this kind, and can be resolved by scientific methods 
just so far as they can be referred to changes in the constitution or the actings 
of an extended and material substratum. We pass over the grosser and cruder 
theories of the ancient schools, which resolved the soul into some form of refined but 
unorganized matter, as now universally outgrown and rejected, and observe and 
notice only that form of modern matci-ialism which passes current with not a few 
scientific men. This theory makes the brain and nervous system the proper sub- 
stance of the soul, and explains its phenomena by the peculiar activity of this 
highly organized material substance. It has this in common with the material- 
ism of the grosser sort, tb#,t it holds it to be impossible that there should be any 
agent of psychical phenomena except matter. 

g 38. The materialists of the present day are properly called 
tbe e ory rebrahSt; Cerebral Psychologists, and plant themselves on the more recent 
discoveries of physiology in respect to the brain and nervous sys- 
tem. These discoveries are those of the reflex nervous action by the agency of 
the afferent and efferent nerves, made by Sir Charles Bell; the discovery of the 
independent activity of the several systems of nerves, made by Marshall Hall : 
of the capacity for increased nervous energy, and the flow of a more effectivo 
nervous stimulus, which is induced by the repeated action of any organ, whether 
internal or external, whether muscle or brain ; of the changes in the substance of 
the brain attendant upon a high mental development — a change in bulk and 
complexity ; and, last of all, the discovery of the provision for the consentient or 
consilient action of different organs of the body, by the coordinating agency of 
tne great nerve centres, which tendency can be greatly augmented and modified 
by culture and habit. These physiological facts, combined with the doctrine of 
the association of ideas, which is resolved by many into the physical coaction 
and coalescence of brain movements and brain cells, are the data or material* 



§ 39. IS PSYCHOLOGY A SCIENCE ? 37 

out of which the Cerehral Psychologists construct their science of the human 
soul. Some cerebralists venture to avail themselves of the as yet partially estab- 
lished doctrine of the correlation of physical forces, in support of the conclusion 
that mind, or soul-energy, is but the spiritual correlate or metamorphose of so 
much brain or nervous energy. Many of these views are ably represented in the 
works of Professor Alexander Bain, of Aberdeen, entitled The Senses and the In- 
tellect, and The Emotions and the Will, also, Mental and Moral Science, etc. 

The facts and phenomena recognized by the cerebralists are true and impor- 
tant. The most of them should be treated of in anthropology, or the science 
which treats of the relations of the soul to the body. We may even admit that 
they all deserve to be considered among the conditions of the purely psychical 
activities. But they are only the invariable antecedents or the essential condi- 
tions of these phenomena. There is no evidence that they produce these pheno- 
mena ; they do not appear among the constituent elements of any psychical state 
or act; they cannot be found in them by analysis; they do not explain in the 
least the original capacity to produce them ; they do not account for the depen- 
dence of one of these classes of states upon another, as of memory upon percep- 
tion, or of reasoning upon both. These cerebral conditions might be supposed 
to exist, without the occurrence of any of the phenomena in question, without 
perception, memory, or reasoning. 

Moreover, these professed explanations have neither meaning nor application 
except as they suppose the mind already to possess a knowledge of psychical 
phenomena as known by consciousness, and as connected by certain scientific 
relations which are purely psychical in their origin and authority. The cere- 
bralist talks, like every other man, of perceiving, of being conscious, of re- 
membering, of induction, and of reasoning. He proposes, as problems to be ex- 
plained, these phenomena as dependent on and connected with one another in 
the experience of human consciousness. Of these facts of consciousness he con- 
tinually avails himself, to give meaning and significance to his cerebral analysis. 
In short, he supposes a science of the mind's inner experiences which he pro- 
poses to supplement by facts or laws of sense-observation, using the facts to be 
explained to interpret the facts which explain them. Should he attempt to use 
the nomenclature of his own science in place of that given by the science 
founded on consciousness, he would fail to be understood. The one cannot be a 
substitute or an equivalent for the other. A science supposes a knowing 
agent, and a knowing agent is something other than a throbbing brain : and to 
know even the functions of the brain, especially after a scientific method, must 
surely be something more than for the brain to exercise a function in respect to 
itself and its own functions. Such a conception is more incredible and incon- 
ceivable than the conception, which is so often stigmatized, of the soul as con- 
scious of its own operations. A soul that is self-conscious would not be so 
■singular as a brain functionizing about itself. 

§ 39. The so-called phrenologists constitute a distinct branch 
of the cerebral school, if, indeed, their doctrines have not been Wica) theory, 
superseded by the more exact and comprehensive knowledge of 
the brain on which the cerebralists build. To the claims of the phrenologists 
to have established a science of the soul, the following objections may be urged: 
1. They have not proved that the protuberances of the brain, or the cranium, 
on which their science is founded, correspond to the psychical powers or func- 



38 INTRODUCTION. § 40, 

tions which it is claimed they decisively indicate. 2. The classification of these 
very psychical powers which they adopt is illogical, inasmuch as it is chargeable 
with not a few cross divisions. 3. The classifications and arrangements of the 
whole science rest for their verification on the knowledge of the soul which is 
given by consciousness. It even requires this knowledge to supplement its obser- 
vations of the cranium. It is consciousness which furnishes all the facts which 
are to be explained, and which is the test of the correctness of the classifications. 
Were phrenology established, it would not be a science of psychical facts: it 
would serve only as a guide in the use of certain external indications as explain- 
ing the psychical characteristics of individuals. 

The question may here properly be raised, whether the brain is not the organ 
of the soul. We reply, that there is an important difference between asserting 
that the brain is the substance of which psychical processes are the functions, 
and the very general statement that the brain is the organ of the soul. This 
last would seem of itself to imply that the brain is one substance and the soul 
is another, each having proper features and functions of its own. To say that 
the soul, so long as it exists with its present corporeal environments, uses and 
depends upon the brain as its organ of communication with the material world, 
and sympathizes with the physical condition of the brain in its capacity to act 
with effect, is to say no more than the truth. This dependence and sympathy 
may hereafter be established in a multitude of particulars which have not yet 
been discovered. The brain might itself be subdivided into special organs, and 
for exch of these a separate and as yet unknown function might be ascertained. 
The relations of these organs and their functions to the powers and acts of the 
soul might be traced out with surprising minuteness, and still the brain would 
not be proved to be identical with the soul itself. 

§ 40. The Associational Psychology represents still another 
tionalist theory. theory °f tae science of the soul. It is founded, as its name 
imports, upon the fact or law recognized by all psychologists, 
that the ideas or acts of the soul which are often united tend to recall one another 
mor« readily. This law is applied by this school to take the place of every other 
law Ci- condition of psychical activity, and to exclude every other power or 
capacity. It is made to stand in the place of the so-called faculties, and even 
to explain the origin of all necessary and intuitive truths. The school numbers 
many adherents, among whom are conspicuous Hobbes, Hume, Hartley, Bonnet, 
James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Bain, and Herbert Spencer. Some of these are 
more consistent and extreme in their conclusions than others, but all may be 
fairly said to adopt the associationalist theory in its principal features. These 
common features are the following. They hold, 1. That a psychical state is 
analogous to a change or effect in a material object as being a simple impression, 
or changed condition which is simple — not complex, as is claimed by those who 
find in every such state a conscious relation to the e<jo. They also, hold, that it 
is necessarily produced by its cause, condition, or object. They deny, distinctly 
or impliedly, the truth that every state of the soul must be performed by the con- 
scious ego, and that in many of these states this ec/o is active, and in no sense 
passive. 2. They teach that every such state thus necessarily produced and pas- 
sively experienced, tends to be reproduced with its attendants. 3. A repro- 
duced Svate, unless in some way reinforced, as by similar conditions, of itself 
lends to be and is reproduced with an energy that is weaker than that of the 



§40. IS PSYCHOLOGY A SCIENCE? 39 

original. (Cf. Hume, Bain, and Spencer.) 4. If it is often reproduced and is 
reinforced in every act, its energy is greatly increased. This increased energy is 
manifested subjectively by it3 stronger tendency to recur again, and objectively by 
the greater vividness with which the object is represented. Herbert Spencer in- 
sists that the facility thus acquired becomes literally mechanical, and that the 
acts in question pass entirely out of the domain of consciousness, and are taken 
ap by the passive energies, first of the associational faculty, and then of the 
orain and nerve-cells. In this way they become the material for propagation, 
through transformations of the nervous substance which are transmitted from 
one generation to another. A few physiologists, who are not so extreme, account 
for the phenomena in question by what they call processes of 'unconscious 
cerebration.' Every activity of the mind not occasioned by some new of 
original impression, is the action or product of this tendency to recurrent action, 
thus weakened or strengthened in whole or in part. Imagination is a weak- 
ened impression. An act of memory is a somewhat stronger and recurring ac- 
tivity, bringing up a more perfect reproduction of the past. Generalization is 
a more vigorous revival of some part of many original impressions, which is 
capable of being suggested by each of these originals or their parts, and made 
common to them all. Judgment and induction are similar experiences of partial 
elements of more widely ramified impressions. All these processes are reduced 
to the more vivid experiences which result from many similar impressions; 
never to the discernment and affirmation of similarity in the parts of each of the 
objects to which they belong. Similarity itself, as the ground and motive to the 
classification and interpretation of nature, is only the result of two or more 
passive impression-;, and never an intelligent cognition or judgment. It is not 
an objective fact of relation knowable by the intellect, but a subjective sensa- 
tion or impression more or less frequently recurring. 

The belief of necessary truths or fundamental relations, is the result of the 
frequent conjunction of similar experiences made inseparable by repetition. 
Thus, the relation of causation is resolved by Hume into the customary connec- 
tion of ideas or objects. Thus, J. Stuart Mill resolves the belief in any neces- 
sary truths, even the simplest mathematical postulates or axioms, into " insepa- 
rable association," and gravely suggests that their opposites might be and ap- 
pear just as axiomatic to a community trained under different associations. 
Thus, Herbert Spencer, in his Principles of Psychology, resolves our a priori con- 
victions concerning the reality of space and time, and the relations which they 
involve (for the necessity of which, as realities, he contends, against Kant and 
Hamilton), into the invariable conjunctions which first created a persistent ten- 
dency to recurrence, which tendency has been fixed by being propagated through 
countless generations of human beings. 

It is necessarily implied in this theory that it dispenses with what it calls the 
scholastic doctrine of separate faculties of the soul. This, indeed, is its pride 
and boast, that it makes these several faculties to be but varied results of the sin- 
gle tendency or law of association. 

The fundamental defect of the associational school, consists in this, that it 
does not distinguish between those activities of the soul by which, so to speak, 
objects are prepared for and presented to the soul for its varied activities, pre- 
eminently that of knowledge, and the activities which the soul performs with re- 
spect to them when so prepared and presented. An impression on the sensorium, 



40 INTRODUCTION. § 41. 

even when responded to by reflex nervous activity, is not the act of knowledge 
by which the mind distinguishes the object from itself and from other objects; 
nor does the tendency thereby created to its repetition explain the act of imagi- 
nation or memory with respect to it when represented a second time. A similar 
impression, in whole or in part, is a very different thing from that apprehension 
of a whole or part as similar which is essential to generalization and reasoning 
as acts of knowledge. The constant conjunction of two ideas, in consequence 
of which the one will always suggest the other, does not explain the relation 
under which the mind connects them in an act of judgment ; least of all the rela- 
tion by which it joins them in those beliefs which are necessary and intuitive, as 
are those which concern the relations of space, time, causation, and design. 

It is worthy of notice, that though the associational school is plausibly suc- 
cessful in its explanations of the lower activities and products of the intellect, 
they fail most signally in explaining the higher operations. J. S. Mill supple- 
ments the functions of the associational power in his theory of reasoning and in- 
duction by resorting to an ' expectation concerning the uniformity of nature/ 
which neither association nor induction can account for. Bain resorts to the 
emotional nature to explain belief, and Herbert Spencer must fall back upon the 
growth of two nerve-cells into one, propagated indefinitely through successive 
generations, to account for a priori and necessary beliefs. 

The associational school can only explain the higher processes and products 
of the mind by explaining them away — by causing them, under the pressure of 
its theory, to become something else than what they are. Its theories and ex- 
planations are plausible, because the single principle on which they rest is so 
nearly allied to the pervasive law of attraction, which is so potent in mechanical 
and chemical philosophy. The extensive and ready favor with which they are 
received as the only truly scientific theory of the mind, is but a single example 
of the power of materialistic analogies and prepossessions in the judgments of 
spiritual facts and relations. 

The associational theory, though in its fundamental principle not 
rialistic ma & ' necessarily materialistic, has been uniformly received by the cere- 
bralists, especially by the cerebralists of the modern school. The 
doctrine that every mental process is the result of the association and blending 
of ideas, when united with the principle which explains association by the conjunc- 
tion of nerve-cells into nerve-growths, and the consilience of nerve activities by 
the increased energy of nervous stimuli, commends itself as demonstrable, rea- 
sonable, and true to all those who find in the movements and growths of the 
brain the scientific explanation of psychical processes. Bonnet, Hartley, Bain, 
and Herbert Spencer impliedly, are eminent examples of the union of both cere- 
bralism and associationalism in the same scientific theory. 

§ 41. The Metaphysical, or, as it is called by some, the Con- 
Metaphysical structivo theory of the science, remains to be noticed. This as^ 
cholo<<-y. sumes that psychology can become a science only as it is ex- 

pounded in the spirit of a system of speculative philosophy which 
is first assumed or proved to bo true, and which must be established as true, be- 
fore the study of the mind can be made truly scientific, or even before it can 
begin. There is a truth in the assumption, that every special science is only so 
far scientific as it rests upon true metaphysics. But there is an important differ- 
ence between the correct and adjusted statement of this underlying philosophy 



§ 41. IS PSYCHOLOGY A SCIENCE ? 41 

in a pei/ected system, and the investigation of these truths in their concrete appli- 
cations without the aid of such a system. In psychological studies the tempta- 
tion is particularly strong to view the facts in the light of some preconceived and 
half-learned philosophy; but it ought for this very reason to be more vigor- 
ously resisted. It is in the order of nature that the study of metaphysics should 
follow after the study of the mind, inasmuch as it is by the analysis of the power to 
know, that we are supposed first to discover what it is to know, and especially 
what are the objects and relations which are essential to science; in other woids, 
what conceptions and relations are philosophically valid as the axioms and pos- 
tulates of scientific knowledge. 

To pursue the reversed order, is to weaken the certainty of knowledge, as well 
as to confuse and embarrass the mind of the student. Such an error of method 
is certain to be revenged on speculative philosophy itself. It opens the way for 
fantastic dogmatism on the part of the teacher; for, as soon as he is emancipated 
from the necessity of justifying his speculative system to the consciousness of his 
learners by the facts of inner experience, he will be tempted to be positive when 
he is not certain, and to be fantastic when he is neither logical nor clear. It 
breeds haziness and pretension on the part of the student. In attempting to fol- 
low a guide who deviates from the order of nature, his steps cease to be confident 
and firm. The want of clear insight he will supply by pretension and conceit, 
which are both parent and offspring of credulity and dependence. 

No maxim deserves to be recorded by the student of philosophy in letters more 
clear and bright than this : ' The man who seeks to enter the temple of philoso- 
phy by any other approach than the vestibule of psychology, can never penetrate 
into its inner sanctuary ; for psychology alone leads to and evolves philosophical 
truth, even though it is itself subordinate to philosophy.' The investigator who 
attempts to construct psychology by the aid and under the direction of a meta- 
physical system, contradicts the order by which both psychology and philosophy 
are developed and acquired. 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT: 
ITS FUNCTION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FACULTIEa 



A PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. 

„ , , a § 42. We have considered the soul as capable of 

Knowledge de- . , , ■*■ 

fined, what is various functions or operations, which are manifested 

it to know ? . l-i/i 

to consciousness as psychical facts or phenomena. 
The intellect has been defined : — the soul as endowed with and 
exercising the power to know. We now proceed to make the 
intellect the special object of our study, that is, we enter upon 
that special division of psychology which is concerned with the 
capacities, operations, and laivs of the human intellect. 

The distinctive function of the intellect being to know, we at 
once inquire, ' What is it, for the soul to know ? ' The fact that 
we exercise the function of knowing is attested by consciousness 
and also that it differs from feeling and willing. For this conscious 
experience there can be no substitute. All definitions and de- 
scriptions presuppose that the person to whom thoy are addressed 
can understand their import and verify their truth by referring 
to his own conscious acts. 

What consciousness apprehends and distinguishes may be more 
exactly defined as follows : 

1. To know, is an operation of the soul acting as the intellect 
— an operation in which it is preeminently active. In knowing, 
we are not so much recipients as actors. We do not merely sub- 
mit to the impressions made upon the senses from without. Nor 
are we the passive subjects of the mechanical operations of ideas 
already acquired, acting upon us by an independent force and 
movement of their own. But in all states of knowledge the 
eoul knows itself to be active. 

2. The intellect exercises its capacity to know under certain 
42 



§ 42. ITS FUNCTION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FACULTIES. 43 

conditions. Like every other agent in nature, it is limited in 
respect to the mode, energy, and results of its action, by the 
occasions and circumstances under which it acts. 

Thus the intellect cannot perceive a color, a taste, a tree, a 
house, unless these objects are presented to the mind, for it 
to act concerning or upon. So, too, it cannot remember unless 
an event has occurred which it may proceed to recall and recog- 
nize. Nor can it imagine or believe, without certain materials 
or data, by means of which it creates or infers. 

These conditions are objective only. There are also conditions 
which are subjective, as the mind's capacity to know, which is 
always implied; its disposition for present activity, its bodily 
conditions of health and reason ; also certain favoring circum- 
stances, as absence of preoccupation ; and, last of all, the direc- 
tion and fixing of the attention to the so-called objects. 

3. The objects which condition the acts of the intellect are 
diverse in their character. Some are presented from the world 
without: as the objects of sense, for the existence and nature 
of which, the soul itself may be in no way responsible. Others 
are presented from within, as the operations of the soul itself, in 
the various forms and the endless variety of the states of know- 
ledge, feeling, and will, all of which are apprehended as objects 
by consciousness. 

Others still are the products or results of precedent acts or 
energies of the soul — residua from objects once perceived, waiting 
to be re-awakened — the so-called images or pictures once present, 
now absent, yet capable of being revived. 

It is manifest from this enumeration that the word object is 
used in two widely divergent senses — either as the external or 
material object, the object-object, as it is often called, and which 
may be explained as the object eminently objective ; or as the 
subject-object, i. e., the mental object, or the object created by the 
mind's own energy. The adjectives objective and subjective, also, 
follow the import of the nouns. Objective is applied to whatever 
the mind contemplates as aa object, whether it be a subject-object 
or an object-object Every relation which such an object holds is 
called objective. On the other hand, subjective is applied to the 
knowing mind, whether it is conceived as apprehending a subject* 
object or an object-object. Subjective is also applied to all tb/» 



44 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 44. 

psychical experiences and acts ; to the feeling and willing, as 
well as the knowing soul. 

§ 43. 4. If the soul can create objects for itself to 
which prepares know — as in the cases already referred to of con- 
iuowTedge. sciousness and memory, — we ought carefully to dis- 
tinguish those of its activities by which objects are, sc 
to speak, prepared for the mind's cognition, from the special ac- 
tivity of the intellect in knowing these objects when prepared or 
presented for its apprehension. For example, the energy of the 
soul in what is called the association of ideas — by which, on occa- 
sion of the presence of an object known, another object presents 
itself in order to be known — is clearly distinguishable from the 
act of the intellect in apprehending that object when presented. 
In like manner, all the antecedent preparation by which material 
things are made ready to be known through the joint action of 
body and spirit in the sensorium, is plainly diverse, and ought 
to be distinguished from the act of the mind in perceiving 
the object when thus made ready. 

We observe also, that these acts or functions of preparation, 
are generally not conscious acts, in the sense in which the acts 
of knowledge are. Some of them may be wholly removed from 
consciousness, as is the activity by which the soul preserves and 
suggests objects once known, even though this very activity 
largely depends on previous conscious operations. Some of these 
may be entirely removed from consciousness, as the physiological 
or psycho-physical operations which conditionate sense-perception. 
Others may be entirely within the range of conscious observation, 
though performed with rapid,spontaneous and uncontrolled exertion. 

They are all properly psychical acts, and are appropriately 
treated in connection with those activities with which conscious- 
ness has to do. We cannot understand the one class of activities 
without constant reference to the other. 

§ 44. 5. To know — the conditions of knowledge 

To know, im- . t «f 

plies the cer- being fulfilled — is to be certain that something; is. 

tainty of being. ° . ° 

Knowledge and being are correlative to one another. 
There must be being, in order that there may be knowledge. 
But it belongs to the very essence of knowledge to apprehend or 
cognize its object to be. Subjectively viewed, to know, involves 
certainty ; objectively it requires reality. 



§ 45. ITS FUNCTION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FACULTIES. 45 

We distinguish different kinds of objects* and different kinds of 
reality. Objects may be psychical or material. Their reality 
may be mental and internal, or material and external, but in 
either case it is equally a reality. The spectrum which the 
camera paints on the screen, the reddened landscape seen through 
a colored lens ; the illusion that crosses the brain of the 
!unatic, the vision that frightens the ghost-seer; the thought 
ihat darts into the fancy and is gone as soon, each as really exists 
as does the matter of the solid earth, or the external forces of 
the cosmical system. It is true, one kind of existence and reality 
is not as important to us as is the other ; we dignify one class as 
real, and call the other unreal. We name some of these o jects 
realities, and others shadows and unreal ; but, philosophically 
speaking, and so far as the act of knowledge is concerned, they 
are alike real and are alike known to be. 

The word being is sometimes contrasted with phenomenon. It 
is obvious that in that case being is not used in the sense in which 
we have denned it; i. e., as equivalent to a knowable object. When 
used in such a contrast, we oppose permanent, or independent 
being, to transient, or dependent being. 

We often err in making one kind of reality indicate another. 
We do not err in not knowing that something is, but in mistaking 
it for something which it is not. We do not err as to that the 
being is, but as to what it is. We do not err as to its beingness 
or entity, but as to its relations. 

This leads us to observe : 

§ 45. 6. In knowing, we apprehend not only that 
objects exist, but also that they exist in certain rela- of relations/ 
turns. It is essential to the definition of knowledge, 
not only that we know objects as existing, but that we know 
them as relrted. We cannot even know two thought-objects as 
existing without also knowing that the one is not the other. We 
cannot notice two leaves, without knowing that they are alike or 
unlike in form, surface, or color. We cannot observe two oc- 
currences without referring them to the same or different causes, 
etc., etc. 

It may be objected that, although it may be true that when- 
ever two objects are known by a single act, they must be known 
in relation, yet it is not so when the object is single. To this we 



46 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 46 

reply, that it is impossible that an object should be known singly 
and apart from every other. A single object must be known by 
some agent, and it cannot be known by that agent unless the 
object is distinguished from the agent, and from his act in know- 
ing : but to be distinguished is to be known in the relation of 
diversity. The attention may not be strongly fixed on the rela- 
tion — it may seem to be engrossed by either of the two objects: 
but their diversity cannot be unknown. 

But there is scarcely such a thing supposable as a single 
object. No single object actually exists in the world of matter or 
of mind. Every so-called object or event in nature, every single 
state of mind, will readily resolve itself before the attentive eye 
into many separable elements existing in relations to each other, 
and held together as one thing by the cementing force of these 
bonds. An apple, an orange, a pebble, nay, even a grain of sand, 
consists of parts not a few, united into one perceived whole. A 
mental state, however simple, is in its essential nature complex, 
to say nothing of the special relations of time and quality which 
distinguish it from every other. 

This prepares us to assert that to know, always involves two 
comprehensive acts, each of which corresponds to the other — the 
act of separation, or resolving objects as wholes into their parts 
or distinguishable elements, and the act of uniting or combining 
these parts into their wholes. These acts are technically termed 
analysis and synthesis, and they are present in every form and 
variety of knowledge. In sense-perception the different parts 
of material objects and the objects themselves, are first distin- 
guished and then united under relations of space and time. In 
consciousness they are connected as coexistent, successive, or pro- 
duced by the active ego. In imagination they are again sepa- 
rated and reunited. In thought or intelligence, they are again 
divided, to be re-combined as constituents of general notions or 
concepts, of judgments, arguments, inferences, and systems. 
Thought, indeed, tends to bring all knowledge into the unity of 
common properties, powers, laws, and ends. 

§ 46. 7. The process or act of knowledge is com- 
cess "< If know- plete when it is matured into a product and this 
ledge complete p r0( j uct itself becomes an object to the mind's future 
knowing. At one time the whole of a mental state become* 



§ 47. ITS FUNCTION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FACULTIES. 47 

such an object ; at another, some one element of a single mental 
state is detached from the act that produced it, and becomes en- 
dowed, so to speak, with a separate life. This product, so far as 
it exists, exists as a mental transcript or representation of the 
original, whether that original were a subject-object or an object- 
object It is also capable of being recalled, and of itself recalling 
its original. 

The power of producing such permanent and reproducible 
results is essential to the perfection and the utility of the act 
of knowing. It is so essential, that upon it depend the simplest 
acts of the memory and the imagination, without which the 
mind would be limited to the present, and could neither gather 
instruction from the past, nor apply wisdom to the future. 
The higher processes by which man explains the powers and laws 
of nature would otherwise be impossible, and the capacity to use 
these powers and to apply these laws in any practical service 
would be excluded altogether. 

The knowledge which is thus separated fiom the original ac- 
tivity is called representative knowledge, with reference to the 
original act of acquiring, and mediate or represented knowledge, 
with reference to the original objects known. The products thus 
preserved are called acquired or positive knowledge. 

§ 47. 8. The same act of knowledge, with similar 
. . ,. . , . The act of 

^ojective conditions, may be performed with greater knowing is <n- 

or less energy. This greater or less energy in the energy. Atten- 
operation of knowing is called attention; which 
word, as its etymology suggests, is another term for tension or 
effort, and was doubtless first transferred to the spiritual opera- 
tion from the strained condition of the part or whole of the 
bodily organism, which accompanies or follows such effort. This 
effort is manifested in the more or less exclusive and complete 
occupation of the knowing power by the object or relation that 
is apprehended. This greater or less effort of attention is fol- 
lowed by the greater or less distinctness, vividness, and complete- 
ness in the objects apprehended, and in the objects retained 
among the mind's permanent possessions, as also by a greater or 
less facility in exercising a similar activity a second time. 

Some of these beings and relations are discerned by the mind 
with far greater ease than others. To hold the* mind to certain 



48 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 4& 

classes of objects and relations, is comparatively easy, requires 
little or no exertion, and is accomplished with spontaneous 
facility. To know so as to master an unfamiiiar object, always 
involves effort at the first ; and a ready facility can only be at- 
tained by frequent repetition. Why or how this is so, we need 
not here explain. The fact is attested by universal observation. 
It is natural and soon becomes easy to all men to attend tc 
material objects, up to a certain degree of minuteness. It k 
comparatively difficult and unnatural to consider closely the ex- 
periences and processes of the soul. It is easy to decide upon 
the comparative length and breath of two corporeal objects. It 
is not so easy to apprehend the parts and relations of a ma- 
thematical theorem or of a logical argument. The easier and 
more natural processes are performed by all men. The more 
difficult and less natural are reserved for the few. For facility 
in the one, that education which nature furnishes to all, is amply 
sufficient. For skill and readiness in the other, special discipline 
and culture, — literally great pains-taking, — are requisite. 

The easier and spontaneous processes are first performed, and 
are therefore the earliest perfected and matured. The more diffi- 
cult and artificial are exercised next in order ; and readiness and 
skill in using them is reached at a later period. The powers of 
sense and outw^ard observation are first developed, next those of 
memory and imagination, and last of all, those of reflection, 
thought, and reason. 

As it is with the intellectual processes, so is it with their pro- 
ducts. We have seen how the products are related to the pro- 
cesses ; that as the mental processes are employed and perfected 
with energetic attention, so the mental products are evolved in 
completed perfection, as naturally and as certainly as the ripe 
fruit or perfected seed drops from the plant or tree which has 
rightly elaborated its organic processes. 

§ 48. 9. In this way there comes to be an organic 

The psycholo- ° J . ° 

gicni and inrricni connection among the products ot the intellect, cor- 
relation of pro- ° . , . „ , , 
cesses and pro- responding to the organic relations or the several 

dn cts. r & _ , . , ° . ™, . , . 

processes out of which they grow. I his relation, as 
it depends on the development of the soul itself, is called psy- 
chological: as it implies antecedence and subsequence of time, it 
is called wironological. 



§ 48. ITS FUNCTION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FACULTIES. 49 

Besides the psychological or chronological relation of the 
powers and products to one another, there is still another, which 
is more important and fundamental, and that is their philosophi- 
cal or logical relation. 

We nse one of these kinds of knowing to supplement the 
other, and often not only to supplement, but even to correct its 
Dperations and results. Thus we reason to conclusions which we 
cannot observe by the senses or experience in consciousness. We 
infer results which we cannot try by experiment, and we predict 
them before it is time for them to occur. We correct rash con- 
clusions, by looking at principles and laws. We deny assertions, 
however confident, by employing arguments. We question so- 
called facts because they do not square with an established 
theory. 

Corresponding to the relation between these processes of know- 
ing, there is the relation of logical dependence or of rational con- 
nection between their products. One conception is subordinate 
to another, as a species to a genus ; or one is a property or at- 
tribute of another, as a quality of a substance ; or one is con- 
tained in another, as an element in its definition ; or is given as 
a reason for another, as a proof for an assertion, a premise for a 
conclusion, a datum for an induction, or a means to an end. 
Many conceptions and truths are also capable of being united in 
mutual relations of classification and explanation, as constituents 
of a system. All these are examples of logical relations in 
mental products. 

The logical relations of the products grow out of the philoso- 
phical dependence of the processes from which the products are 
evolved. But inasmucli as the products are expressed in 
language, and are made objective to the mind, their logical and 
objective relations are more striking and prominent than the 
subordination of the acts of knowledge to one another when 
psychologically considered. The rational faculty asserts for 
itself intellectual authority over the lower powers, by asserting 
for its products, the place of criteria, rules, reasons, and princi- 
ples in respect to the products of the lower. Hence the objec- 
tive or logical relations are more conspicuous than the psycho 
logical and subjective. 

We therefore set up a broad distinction between two kinds of 
knowledge, calling the one empirical and the other philosophical 



50 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 48. 

the one, knowledge by observation, and the other, knowledge by 
principles or reasons. We should remember, when we make 
this distinction, that the same mind uses two ways or processes 
of knowing, and that these supplement one another. There 
must, then, be a. relation of dependence between the two. The 
one must be subject to the other, in the mind's own judgment; 
and according to the ordinances of the mind's own constitution. 
The mind that observes and acquires, knows that, by thinking, it 
can correct and aid its own observing, and that the one method 
of knowing has a certain authority over the other. 

Thus, when we analyze a substance, we determine the qualities 
that are common to its class, and so are enabled to define a 
general conception, by resolving it into its constituent or neces- 
sary elements. We account for or explain a phenomenon which 
we observe, or a fact of which we hear, by referring to the causes 
or forces by which it was produced ; and these very causes or 
forces we interpret still further by the laws according to which 
they act; or we round off and complete the explanation by 
stating the adaptations to an end or assumed design. 

The psychological and logical relations of knowledge do not 
always coincide. The order of intellectual growth and of psy- 
chological development does not agree with the order of logical 
dependence and of philosophical arrangement. That which is 
last in actual attainment, is first in logical importance. The 
truths and relations which the mind is the latest and the slowest 
to develop and assent to, may be those which are fundamental 
to its rational knowledge. It may even be taken as a maxim, 
that what is psychologically last, is first in logic and in reason. 

Another and still higher activity of the intellect is 
or speculative,' the critical or speculative. It reaches this when 
InowTedge. ° f having attained the command of its higher faculties, 
and developed the familiar principles and rules 
which they involve, it applies them in judging the mind itself, 
and preeminently its higher powers, for the purpose of testing 
their trustworthiness and examining their authority. After 
'lestioning every other agent in the universe, and judging of its 
workings, it turns its scrutiny in upon itself, to test the processes 
by which it knows, and even the very rules and principles which 
it imposes upon every thing besides ; itself included, 



§ 49. iTS FUNCTION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FACULTIES. 51 

\ 49. The consideration of these facts and relations, enables us 
to trace the growth of the mind through the stages of its normal lectual develop- 
development. This development begins with the beginnings of ment, growth 
. ^ „ ...... . D and studies. 

attention. Before this, its activities are, as it were, rudimental 

only. From this condition the mind awakes when some object attracts and holds 
its attention. The infant's power to know begins to be developed when it begins 
to attend. As soon as the infant begins to notice, its vacant countenance for the 
irst time assumes the expression of intelligence, and is lighted with the dawn 
of intellectual activity. Attention gives discrimination, and discrimination im- 
plies objects discriminated. The first objects distinguished are objects of sense 
The sensible objects that are first mastered are those which relate to its wants, 
and generally, so far only as they are related to these wants; first to its appetites, 
then to its affections and desires. "With the discernment of these objects, in their 
relations to these sensibilities and desires, begins also the direction of the active 
powers by intelligence. 

But though the attention is at first chiefly occupied with sensible objects, and 
these prominently in their relations to the sensibilities and the practical wants, it 
is not wholly neglectful of the psychical operations and the psychical self. At a 
very early period the body is distinguished from the material world of which it 
forms a part. The soul also begins to be apprehended as diverse from the body, 
as soon as the purely psychical emotions, as the love of power and sympathy, 
or the irascible passions, are vividly experienced. 

As fast as the attention masters distinct objects, it must separate them into 
separable ideas or images, which are henceforth at the service of the imagina- 
tion and the memory. These reappear in the occasional dream-life that begins to 
disturb what was hitherto the animal sleep of the infant. Memory begins to 
recall past experiences of knowledge and feeling. Recognition finds old and 
familiar acquaintances in the objects seen a second time. At a later period, ima- 
gination begins to imitate the actions and occupations of older persons, and 
furnishes endless and varied playwork for childhood in the busy constructions 
of the never-wearied fancy; while it irradiates the emotional life with perpetual 
and inextinguishable sunshine. 

Slowly, the rudiments of thinking, or the rational processes, begin to be learned 
and practised. The attention not only discriminates, but compares. As it com- 
pares, it discerns likenesses and differences in qualities and relations. These it 
thinks, apart from the individual objects to which they pertain. It groups and 
arranges, under the general conceptions thus formed, the individuals and species 
to which they belong. To these activities language furnishes its stimulus and 
lends its aid. Inasmuch as there can be but a limited language without generali- 
sation, the infant or child is forced to think, by the multitude of words which 
satch its ear and force themselves upon its attention; each representing the pre 
vious thinking of other men, and even of other generations. 

With classifying, are intimately allied the higher acts of tracing effects to 
causes and illustrating causes by effects. Then, inductions are made by interpre- 
ting similar qualities and causes, as exhibited in experience and elicited by 
experiments. The mind becomes possessed of principles and rules, which it 
applies in deductions both to prove and explain. The powers and forces 
of matter and spirit begin to be discerned, as the result of induction and deduc, 
tion combined. The relations of these powers to their conditions, and to one 



52 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 49. 

another, as well as to motion, time, and space, begin to be fixed and definitely 
stated and the laws of matter and of spirit are ascertained in a wider or more 
limited range and application. Science arranges all beings and all events into 
the order of completed systems, by means of the processes of thought; the 
world of nature is recast into a new spiritual structure, under the relations by 
which thought decomposes and recombines its individual beings and events, 
as presented to observation under the relations of space and time. Adaptation 
and design shoot golden threads of light and order through that otherwise 
pale and lifeless system of nature, which science reconstructs out of blind 
forces and fixed mechanical laws. The originating and intelligent intellect 
of the Eternal Creator and Designer is reached, as the first assumption and the 
last result of scientific thought. 

Last of all, thought turns back upon itself, and critically analyzes all its 
knowledge, and its very power to know. It inquires into and scrutinizes its 
acquisitions and its assumptions, and challenges its own confidenco in its most 
familiar processes and beliefs. It seeks to justify to itself its acquired knowledge, 
its science, and its faith, by retracing, under the guidance of logical relations, 
every step it has taken, and every stage through which it has passed in its de- 
velopment and growth. It lays bare the necessary assumptions, the primary and 
universal relations, which are acknowledged and acted upon in all observation, 
in ail science, and in all faith. It returns again from the course of its speculative 
criticism, to confide a second time in this knowledge and the faith which it could 
not but acquire and apply in its progressive synthesis, and which it now has 
learned to vindicate by its retrogressive analysis. 

These critical and speculative processes of thought are reserved for but a few 
of the race to prosecute. They are, however, the normal and the necessary con- 
summation of the completed growth of the fully developed man. 

The consideration of the development and growth of the intellect furnishes 
the principles by which to regulate the culture of the intellect, and to arrange 
the order of it 8 studies. 

The studies which should be first pursued are those which require and disci- 
pline the powers of observation and acquisition, and which involve imagination 
and memory, in contrast with those which demand severe efforts and trained 
habits of thought. In early life, objective and material studies should have 
almost the exclusive precedence. The capacity of exact and discriminating per- 
ception, and of clear and retentive memory, should be developed as largely as 
possible. The imagination, in all its forms, should be directed and elevated — we 
do not say stimulated, because, in the case of most children, its activity is 
never-tiring, whether they be at study, work or play. 

We do not say, cultivate perception, memory, and fancy, to the exclusion or 
repression of thought, for this is impossible. These poAvers, if exercised by 
human beings, must be interpenetrated by thought. If wisely cultivated by 
studies properly arranged, they will necessarily involve discrimination, compari- 
son, and explanation. To teach pure observation, or the mastery of objects or 
words, without classification and interpretation, is to commit the error of simple 
tstupidity. But, on the other hand, to stimulate the thought-processes to unnatu- 
ral and prematurely painful efforts, is to do violence to the laws which nature 
has written in tho constitution of the intellect. Even thought and reflection 
teach us that, before tho processes of thought can bo applied, materials must be 



§ 50. ITS FUNCTIONS, DEVELOPMENT, AND FACULTIES. 53 

gathered in large abundance; and to provide for these, nature has made acquisi- 
tion and memory easy and spontaneous for childhood, and reasoning and scienc* 
difficult and unnatural. 

The study of language should be prosecuted in childhood, as it is, in fact, in 
the acquisition of the mother-tongue. In the acquisition of other languages the 
methods by which the vernacular is learned should be followed so f r as is possi- 
ble. Grammar, so far as it is required, should be simple, plain, and practical. 
Its theories should be kept in the background, its terminology and principles 
jhould be the reverse of the abstract. The contrasts and comparisons involved 
between the strange and the familiar, will stimulate and guide to the first begin- 
nings of reflective grammar. The memory for words should be exercised and 
stimulated. Choice tales and poems — narrative and lyric, — should be learned for 
recitation. Natural history in all its branches, as contrasted with the sciences of 
nature or scientific physics, should be pursued with the objects before the eye — 
flowers, minerals, shells, birds, and beasts. These studies should all be mastered 
in the spring-time of life, when the tastes are simple, the heart is fresh, and the 
eye is sharp and clear. The facts of history and geography should be fixed by 
repetition and stored away in order. 

But science of every kind, whether of language, of nature, of the soul, or of 
God, as science, should not be prematurely taught. For the consequence is, 
either disgust and hostility to all study on the one hand, or, on the other, super- 
ficial thinking, presumptuous conceit, and, worst of all, sated curiosity. 

The law of intellectual progi'ess involves effort and discipline severely imposed 
and constantly maintained, but the effort and discipline should follow the gui- 
dance of nature. 

§ 50. The consideration of the nature and the de- 
velopment of knowledge teaches on what principles ciassifyi^thc 
we may divide and classify the powers of the in- fnteEt! 
tellect. 

In assigning different faculties to the intellect, we do not divide 
it into separable parts or organs. When we say that the intel- 
lect has faculties, we mean only that the soul, as the intellect, 
acts under certain conditions in clearly distinguishable operations 
which terminate in definite and determinable results or products. 
The consideration of the soul's development gives the conditions 
;>f these faculties. The consideration of the logical relations of the 
products assigns to these faculties their relative authority and 
importance. 

In tracing the development of the intellectual powers in their 
succession, we do not exclude the co-action of the other so-called 
faculties of the soul, as of feeling and will. Their presence and 
igency have already been recognized with sufficient prominence. 
Soy do we deny or overlook the truth, that the several powers 
>f tha intellect act together in the earlier stages of its growth, 



54 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 50. 

and in all the periods of its history aid and direct one another. 
The action of a single power of the intellect does not exclude the 
co-action of the other powers. On the o her hand, it is to be re- 
membered, that as the energy of the whole soul is so far limited 
that one psychical state is preeminently a state of feeling, another 
intellectual, and another voluntary, so, of the intellectual activi- 
ties, one is likely to be predominantly an act of sense rather than 
of memory, and another an act of the imagination rather than oi 
intelligence. 

When it is said that one power, as defined, is, in the order of 
time and growth, developed sooner than another, it is not in- 
tended that each lower power is completely matured before the 
other and higher is used at all, or that distinctly traced boundary 
lines mark off the several stages of the mind's development. This 
would involve the absurdity of teaching that the child perceives 
with the senses for a long time before it begins to remember, and 
that it remembers and imagines for another long period, before it 
generalizes and explains. What is asserted is, that sense must 
begin before memory and thought are possible, and that, as a 
power, it is perfected before thought has reached its consumma- 
tion. Conversely, it will be found to be true in fact, that many 
acts which we call acts of sense-perception are largely intermin- 
gled with acts of representation and thought; also that acts of 
memory recall past objects under the laws of association which 
thought makes possible ; while imagination, in which thought is 
not largely conspicuous, is scarcely worthy the name. 

These cautions being premised, we observe that the powers of 
the intellect are clearly distinguishable by the order of their devel- 
opment and application, as manifested in the character and relcy 
iions of their products. 

The leading faculties of the intellect are three: The pre 

SENTATIVE, OR OBSERVING FACULTY ; THE REPRESENTATIVE, OR 
CREATIVE FACULTY; THE THINKING, OR THE GENERALIZING 

faculty ; or, more briefly, the faculty of experience, the 

FACULTY OF REPRESENTATION, and the FACULTY OF INTELLI- 
GENCE. Each of these has its place in the order of intellectual 
growth and development. Each has its appropriate products or 
objects. Each acts under certain conditions or laws. Each of 
these leading: faculties is subdivided into subordinate powcra 



§ 51. ITS FUNCTION, DEVELOPMENT AND FACULTIES. 5li 

which are distinguishable from one another in like manner with 
their primaries. 

§ 51. I. The presentative faculty, or the faculty of 
acquisition and experience, is subdivided into sense- 

-, ,-. The presenter 

perception and consciousness ; or, as they are some- tive faculty. 
times called, the outer and the inner sense. 

In the order of the mind's development these are exercised 
first and earliest of all. The intellect begins its activity with 
observing objects of sense. Closely connected with this is the 
consciousness of the soul's inner experiences, prominent among 
which are its sensations of pleasure and pain. Not only does this 
order actually occur, but it is impossible for us to conceive of 
any other as possible. The mind must observe before it re- 
members ; unless it had previously observed and acquired, it 
would have nothing to remember or imagine. 

The objects or products with which this power is concerned, or 
which it evolves, are individual objects. In this respect they are 
distinguished from the objects of thought, which are always 
general. But this feature they share with those of memory and 
imagination, which are also individual. From these last they 
are still further distinguished by being presented for the first 
time ; hence the epithet presentative is applied to the faculty by 
which they are known. This feature is made still more precise 
by their individual relations in space and in time. The objects 
of sense are known in space, as being here, and the objects of con- 
sciousness are known as now in time. These two relations they 
share with the objects of no other power. They are also 
mutually related to one another, the one being an individualized 
non-ego, the other being a determinate state of the ego. 

The conditions of the acts of sense-knowledge are the existence 
of the living body in connection with a sentient spirit, and the 
excitement of the same by material agents. Some of these 
are bodily, some are psychical. Some of these are known to 
physiology, others are wholly unknown, but so far as they are 
knowable, they are appropriately considered in explaining the 
power of sense-knowledge. 

The condition which furnishes or constitutes the object for the 
act of consciousness, is that the soul should in fact act or suffer 
in a present and individual state. Consciousness takes heed of 



56 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 52. 

the fact, i. e., of the operation, and cognizes that it is. Whence 
or how it is that the soul furnishes this material, or how the soul 
is able to act in these varied forms, it can do little to explain. 
These operations lie out of the range of consciousness ; they are 
presupposed by it. 

But these objective conditions are not alone. There are also 
jubjective conditions of the presentative power in both conscious 
ness and perception. Let the external world and the quick sen- 
jibility both conjoin to furnish ample material through eye and 
ear ; let the active and eager soul exercise the most varied forms 
of act or affection ; if the perceiving or conscious spirit does not 
attend, it will fail to notice, and of course will fail to know. 

§ 52. II. Next to the presentative comes the 

The repre- ° JL 

sentath-e fit- faculty of representation. I hat this is developed 
second in order of growth and of time to the soul's 
power to acquire and observe, is obvious. 

The objects or products of this power are individual objects, 
like the objects of sense and of consciousness. They differ from 
them in this, that they are representative of them. They are 
therefore not real, but mental objects. They are wrought or 
created by the mind itself, but always with respect to some real 
object actually experienced. This is their common characteristic, 
that they represent observed and experienced objects. They are 
representative ; i. e., they present a second time, and so take the 
place of objects previously known. 

In representing these objects, the mind acts in two ways— as 
the memory ; and as the imagination or phantasy : and hence the 
representative power is divided into these two. In memory it 
knows that the mental object represents an object previously 
known. In imagination it changes the representative object 
into another, such as it has never actually experienced. Ac- 
3ordiog as it changes the object in more or fewer particulars, 
and with special applications, does the imagination receive dif 
ferent names. 

The conditions of the representing power are, that the sou} 
should retain and reproduce past objects for the memory to re- 
cognize and the imagination to modify. If the soul refuses to 
furnish these appropriate objects, neither the memory nor the 
imagination can know their objects. For this reason, the power 



§ 53. ITS FUNCTION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FACULTIES. 57 

of the soul to retain and recall is essential to the power to know 
these mental objects when represented. Concerning the actings 
of the capacity of the soul to retain and reproduce we know little 
directly, but indirectly we know very much : that is, we know 
how we can affect its actings by our own conscious energies in 
acquiring. The relations and laws by which acquired objects 
can be reproduced are more obvious and better established than 
almost any other psychological truths. These are all compre- 
hended under the familiar title of the association of ideas, and 
they very properly enter largely into the consideration of the re- 
presentative power. 

§ 53. III. The power of thought is developed last 
of all in the order of the soul's evolution or growth. temgfnce< orm ~ 
It is also called the intelligence, and the rational 
faculty. 

This power requires for its possible exercise some range of ob- 
servation, some acquisitions of memory, and some creative activ- 
ity of imagination. For its effective energy and its actual appli- 
cation it must be preceded by many separate exercises of all these 
functions. To the thorough and persistent use and the complete 
development of this power, the soul is most of all disinclined; and 
therefore it is perfected and developed later in the order of time. 

But though this power is last and reluctantly developed, it sur- 
passes all the others in dignity and importance. It explains 
facts and events by powers and laws. It enforces conclusions by 
premises. It accounts for inferences by data. It lifts observa- 
tion up to the dignity of science, and establishes it on the firm 
foundation of principles. It enables us to interpret the past 
and to predict the future. 

The products or objects of this power are always generalized 
objects. They are universals, as contrasted with individuals. 
This difference distinguishes this power of the intellect widely 
from the two others. These products are known by various 
names, as the concept, the class, the judgment, the argument, the 
induction, the interpretation, and the system. 

In accordance with these distinguishable products, the intellect 
is said to perform all the acts which require the several powers 
or faculties of generalizing, classifying, judging, reasoning, infer- 
ring, explaining, and methodizing the individual objects given by 

3* 



58 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 5& 

experience. Hence the intellect is sometimes said to be endowed 
with as many subordinate faculties. 

The most obvious aid or instrument provided by Nature for 
furthering these processes and retaining their products, is lan- 
guage. For this reason the existence of language is regarded as 
a necessary result of the power of thought, and the use of 
language is regarded as the indication of its presence and 
exercise. 

The conditions of thought, as distinguished from the materials 
or occasions of thought which experience furnishes, are certain 
relations discerned and generalized by the power of thought 
itself. The reality of these relations is an assumed condition of 
these peculiar operations ; and when the mind comes to appre- 
hend them, it must proceed upon the belief that they are uni- 
versally present and incontestably valid. In this sense the mind 
itself prepares for itself these objects of its own apprehension. 
For the service of thought, all individual objects must be be- 
lieved to be connected or bound together under universal and ne- 
cessary relations or categories. Such are the relations of sub- 
stance and attribute, cause and effect, means and end. Thus the 
relation of substance and attribute is assumed as real in order to 
the possibility and truth of the acts of generalizing and of judg- 
ment. The relation of cause and effect must be presupposed to 
give meaning and force to acts of reasoning and explanation. 
The relations of design are the prefatory conditions of acts of in- 
duction. But universal or generalized objects presuppose the ex- 
istence of individual concepts and their relations. To individual 
beings and events, space and time relations are presupposed. 
Therefore, in order to the products of thought, the intuitions of 
space and time are presupposed. These relations are said to be a 
priori, for the reason that they are presupposed in these processes. 
They are called intuitions, categories, primitive cognitions, etc., eta 
They are said to be universal, because applicable to every indi- 
vidual object in the way explained. They are necessary notions, 
because they are necessarily applied by the mind in all its 
thought-activities, and to all thought-objects. 

They are, however, no more necesary to thought than they 
are to presentation and representation. We imply and suppose 
them as truly, though not as conspicuously, in perception and 



§ 53. ITS FUNCTION, DEVELOPMENT, AND FACULTIES. 59 

consciousness, in memory and imagination, as we do in classifica- 
tion and reasoning. 

But it is by means of thought that we discern and define 
these categories. It is only as we use thought-processes critically 
i — i. e. t as we generalize and analyze our own mental processes — ■ 
that we discover these relations as everywhere and necessarily 
present. Though they are actually present as the conditions 
and elements of all- our knowing, it is only by thought that we 
discover and demonstrate their presence and their application, as 
the conditions of all knowledge. 

In view of the two methods in which the thought 
power is employed, the power itself has been sub- f 7ms X P thought 
divided by many writers into two: the elabora- 
tive faculty, as performing the processes, and the regulative, as 
furnishing the rules — or more properly as prescribing the sphere 
and possibility — of thought. These are named also the dianoetic 
and the noetic faculty. By some writers they are distinguished 
as the understanding and reason, in a usage suggested by Kant, 
but deviating materially from his own. Milton and others call 
them the discursive and intuitive reason. 

We prefer to say that the analysis of the thinking power 
involves two heads of inquiry : 

(1.) What are the several processes of thought of which the 
intellect is capable in the order of their development, the man- 
ner of their action, their conditions, and their products ? So far 
as psychology prosecutes these inquiries, it considers them sub- 
jectively as processes of the soul. When we go further, and 
proceed to define their products as expressed in language, to 
derive rules to direct the knowing processes or to test what is 
known, psychology passes over into the service of logic. 

(2.) What are the ultimate relations or categories which 
thought brings to light, and, which, all knowledge presupposes ? 
What is their authority and trustworthiness ? What is their re- 
lation to special acts of knowledge? What application can be 
made of them to the discovery of truth and the detection 
of error? Last of all, how can they be applied to vindicate 
man's confidence in his own knowledge, and in his very power 
to know ? 

All these questions when prosecuted with reference to the sub- 



60 THE HUMAN INTELLECT, § 53. 

jective power of the soul to evolve and apply these intuitions, 
belong legitimately and necessarily to psychology. 

So far as the intuitions themselves, objectively considered, are 
made the subjects of analysis and discussion; so far as their 
relations to one another, and the structure of human knowledge, 
are examined : so far, in short, as they are made the subject 
of critical or speculative discussion, they lead us within the field 
of metaphysics, ontology, or speculative philosophy, for which, as 
has been already explained, psychology is the direct and neces- 
sary preparation. 

We divide therefore, our treatise into Four parts, with the 
following titles : I. Presentation ; II. Representation ; III. 
Thought; IV. Intuition; the last two being devoted to 
Thought proper and Thought critically applied to the analysis 
of knowledge and the discovery of the categories or ultimate rela- 
tions which are the conditions of its processes and products. 
For the explanation and justification of this division we must 
refer to the foregoing remarks, and the subsequent treatment 
of the topics themselves. 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



PART FIRST. 

PRESENTATION AND PRESENTATIVE KNOWLEDGE 

CHAPTER I. 

CONSCIOUSNESS — NATURAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 

§ 54. We beofin with presentative knowledge. „ 
Of objects presented to the nund there are two classes : defi , ned - Vm* 

l . « . . ously applied. 

objects of matter, and objects of spirit. Corresponding 
to these two classes of objects, two powers or faculties are distin- 
guished, viz., consciousness and sense-perception. We shall 
first treat of consciousness. It is briefly defined as the power by 
which the soul knows its own acts and states. The soul is aware 
of the fleeting and transitory acts which it performs ; as when it 
perceives, remembers, feels, and decides, It also knows its own 
states ; as when it is conscious of a continued condition of intellec- 
tual activity, a gay or melancholy mood of feeling, or a fixed and 
enduring preference. Whether the state is in such cases in fact 
prolonged, or only repeated by successive renewals, we need not 
here inquire ; it is sufficient that states of the soul are distin- 
guished from acts by their seeming continuance. 

Again, the terms conscious and consciousness are often applied 
to any act whatever of direct cognition, whether its object be in- 
ternal or external. In other words, they are used as equivalent 
to knowing, perceiving, etc., or to knowledge in any form. 
Thus we say, ' I was not conscious that you were in the room f 
or, ' I was not conscious that he was speaking ;' as well as, ' I was 
not conscious of being angry.' In cases like these the terms 
designate an act of simple perception and knowledge. The rea' 

61 



62 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 54 

son why they come to do so is, that every act of knowledge, what- 
ever be its nature or object, is attended by consciousness. The 
phrase, ' I was not conscious that you were in the room,' is ex" 
plained as meaning, ' I was not conscious of seeing you in the 
room.' 

Consciousness is also employed as a collective term for all the 
psychical states. In the words of Sir William Hamilton, " it is a 
comprehensive term for the complement of our cognitive ener- 
gies." Every such state or energy is attended by consciousness ; 
it is an act or state of which we are conscious, or, as we some- 
times say, it is a conscious act or state. The sum-total of all 
such acts is therefore expressively described as the consciousness 
of an individual. It is equally true that we are conscious of our 
states of feeling, and these may also be designated by the same 
general and comprehensive term, though with somewhat less pro- 
priety. 

Consciousness is often figuratively described as the 'witness' of 
the states of the soul, as though it were an observer separate from 
the soul itself, inspecting and beholding its processes. It is called 
the 'inner light,' ' an inner illumination,' as though a sudden flash 
or steady radiance could be thrown within the spirit, revealing 
objects that would otherwise be indistinct, or causing those to 
appear which would otherwise not be seen at all. Appellations 
like these are so obviously figurative, that it is surprising thai- 
any philosopher should use them for scientific purposes, or should 
reason upon, or apply them with scientific rigor. 

The terms conscious and consciousness explain their own 
meaning, and confirm the truth of the assumption and belief 
that the fact is true which this language implies. They de- 
scribe a knowing with, or within the knowing agent, and they 
imply that the states of the human soul may be known by the 
soul to which they pertain. 

The power of the soul thus to know itself is often called the 
internal, or the inner sense. This term is suggested by analogy. 
As the soul, by the external sense or senses, apprehends the pro- 
perties and qualities of matter, so it is said to know its own 
Btates and powers by another, i. e., an inner sense. 

Consciousness has also, for the same reason, been called by 
many philosophers, as Leibnitz, ad- or ap-perception, by which 






§ 55. CONSCIOUSNESS. 63 

term the same fact is recognized that the word consciousness im- 
plies, viz., a perception of the mind's own activities, in addition 
to the perception of the objects of those activities. 

The term Bewusstseyn, and its cognates in the Teutonic languages, recognizes 
the distinct — rather than the accomp^^ing — knowledge which consciousness 
always involves. It describes a be-, n o°-rthan a con-knowing; t. e., the clear 
and completed knowledge which the mind usually attains by a second and more 
attentive look. Hence it is with eminent propriety applied to that knowledge 
which the soul has of its inner states, as this, to be of any service, must be 
earnest and attentive. The word in German, however, is not so closely limited 
to this internal knowledge, as is consciousness, in English. It is supplemented 
by self-consciousness — Selbst-bewusstseyn. Hence sometimes, when we should use 
consciousness only, the Germans would say self-consciousness. Their more 
usual technical appellation for the power is the inner or internal sense. 

Reflection is the appellation used by Locke for this power ; or, 
more exactly, it is under this appellation that he discusses its 
nature and authority. Hence, among many English writers re- 
flection is freely used as the exact equivalent of consciousness. 
It is the great and distinctive merit of Locke to have called at- 
tention to this as a separate source of knowledge, and to have 
claimed for the knowledge which it furnishes equal authority and 
certainty with that which is received through the senses. We 
quote a passage memorable in the history of psychology. 

*' The other fountain from which experience furnisheth the understanding with 
ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own minds within us, as it is 
employed about the ideas which it has got ; which operations, when the soul 
comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set 
of ideas, which could not be had from things without ; and such are perception, 
thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different 
actings of our own minds; which we, being conscious of, and observing in our- 
selves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do 
from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in 
himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external ob- 
jects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense.'' 
But as I call the other, sensation, so I call this reflection, the ideas it affords 
being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within 
itself." — Essay, Book ii. chap. i. $ 4. 

§ 55. Consciousness is exercised in two forms, or 
species of activity, viz., the natural or spontaneous Two . forms <*■ 

r J ' ■» consciousness. 

and the artificial or reflective. They are also called 

by some writers the primary and the secondary consciousness. The 

one form is employed by all men ; the other is attained by few. 



64 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 56. 

The first is. a gift of nature and the product of spontaneous 
growth ; the second is an accomplishment of art and the reward of 
special discipline. The natural precedes the reflective iu the order 
of time and of actual development. But it does not differ from 
it in kind, only in an accidental element, which brings its results 
within our reach and retains them for our service. This is the 
general conception which we form of both, as preliminary to the 
special consideration of each. 

The capacity to attend to the psychical states in the lowest 
appreciable degree — i. e., with that energy which leaves any per- 
manent product or result for the memory or imagination — is 
matured by the slow education of infancy and childhood (§ 64) 
During this period, even under the most favorable circumstances, 
the growth and development of consciousness is steady, but slow. 

Where consciousness is energized by attention, and applied to 
psychical phenomena for scientific purposes in the interest of 
psychological science, it is called the sscondary, the artificial, 
the philosophical or reflective consciousness, or simply, reflection. 
As such, it is distinguished from and contrasted with the primary 
the natural, the common, the unreflecting consciousness, or 
simply, consciousness. The division indicated by these con- 
trasted terms is convenient and important. It should always be 
remembered, however, that the two so-called species of conscious- 
ness do not differ from one another in kind, but in degree, and 
that there is no well-defined and sharp line of distinction that 
divides off the one from the other. 

§ 56. We notice first the natural, or primary con- 

Natural con- , . . ' * . 

sciousness as sciousness. Natural consciousness is the power which 
the mind naturally and necessarily possesses of know- 
ing its own acts and states. It may be further described by 
considering it in its operation and its objects, or as consciousness 
the act, and consciousness the object. 

We begin with consciousness the act. As an act, it is a neces- 
sary and essential constituent of many active conditions of the 
soul. The soul cannot know, without knowing that it knows. 
It cannot feel, without knowing that it feels ; nor can it desire, 
will, and act, without knowing that it desires, wills, and acts. 

Consciousness is an act of hiowledge, and is therefore an act 
purely and simply intellectual. The states observed may be 



§ 56. CONSCIOUSNESS. 63 

psychical, in any form, i. e., states of intellect, sensibility, or will 
— but the act by which they are known is intellectual only. It 
is an act of direct or intuitive knowledge. To attain it, neithei 
memory nor reasoning are required, nor any indirect process oi 
succession of acts, but the soul immediately knows its present 
condition or act. It confronts it face to face. It knows it as 
now existing. It is eminently presentative knowledge. 

Consciousness, as an act of knowledge, is matured into, oi 
results in a peculiar product. When it is complete, it furnishes 
for the mind's recall an idea of the object known. This is a 
purely intellectual result. What the mind is conscious of may 
be a state of knowledge, feeling, or choice, but the feeling and 
choice which we reproduce in memory is not a feeling or choice, 
but our idea or image of a feeling or choice, and this is purely 
intellectual. As an act of knowledge, it involves the discern- 
ment of relations (§ 45). We know the state to be our own; 
i. e., we discern its relation to the ego. We know that the 
present is not the past state of the soul ; i. e., we know the two 
under the relations of contrast and of time. Again, the know- 
ing agent distinguishes itself as the conscious observer from itself 
and its own states as the object observed. Like every act of 
knowledge it is at once an act of analytic separation and synthe- 
tic union. 

The act of consciousness is a peculiar intellectual act — an act 
that is preeminently sui generis. Especially is it peculiar in tb j 
conditions of its exercise. To most of the other acts of know- 
ledge it is required that their objects should exist before they are 
known. But in this peculiar process the object and act are 
blended in one. Thus, the landscape on which I gaze is a per- 
manent object, to which I can bring and from which I can with- 
draw my mind. The thought or feeling which I remember must 
have been experienced in order that it may be known a second 
time. It is rashly concluded by many that this is a necessary 
and universal condition of all knowledge. What is as- 
serted of consciousness violates, as is objected, the first and 
essential requirement, that something should have existed, in 
order to be known. * How can I know that I know,' it is urged, 
' unless I have first known, in order to furnish an object for me 
to know V Or it is concluded that consciousness is, at best, but a 



6*6 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 57. 

kind of memory, an act that immediately follows the act or stat* 
of which we are said to be conscious. " No one," says Herbert 
Spencer, " is conscious of what he is, but of what he was a 
moment before. That which thinks, can never be the object of 
direct contemplation ; seeing that, to be this, it must become that 
which is thought of, not that which thinks. It is impossible tc 
I)e at the same time that which regards and that which is re* 
yarded." {Principles of Psychology, Part i. chap, i.) Tho 
force of this objection lies in the assumption, that every thing 
which is known must have already existed. But this assumption 
is unauthorized. It is founded on a supposed analogy between 
this and other acts of knowledge. It by no means follows, 
because the landscape must have existed before we see it, or the 
mental state must have occurred before we remember it, that a 
perception or feeling must be past before we can be conscious of 
it. Besides, how can one remember that which he did not know 
at the time when it occurred? How can one recall the state in 
which he was a moment before, and know that he had been in 
that state, if he was not conscious of it at the precise instant in 
which it occurred ? Those that resolve acts of consciousness into 
acts of memory, make an act of memory itself impossible. 
The remembering act necessarily follows the act which is re- 
membered however closely. We cannot recall the act itself, nor 
that it was our own act, unless wo knew both, when the act 
occurred. 

§ 57. From the consideration of consciousness the 
Consciousness ac ^ we p ass i consciousness the object. The object 
of consciousness has already been defined to be an 
act or state of the soul ; more exactly, the soul acting and suf- 
fering in an individual state. That such an object should be 
peculiar and unlike any other, we are prepared to believe, by 
what we have already noticed under consciousness as an act 
Other peculiarities will reveal themselves to a closer inspection. 
We observe, in general, that objects of consciousness are 
unlike the phenomena of matter in this, that they are given to 
observation as essentially complex even in their greatest simplicity. 
Every state or condition of the spirit in actual experience and as 
known by the soul, is complex, even in its extremest simplicity. 
The obiect is threefold in its elements, every one of which must 



§ 58. CONSCIOUSNESS. 67 

be recognized by the conscious spirit. The elements are, the 
identical ego, either agent or patient according as the case may 
be ; the object with respect to which it acts or suffers ; and the pre. 
sent state or action in which it exists or acts. Every psychical state 
of which we are conscious implies an acting or existing ego, to 
which the state pertains. A condition of the soul without an in- 
dividual person acting or feeling, is impossible as a conception, 
and is never experienced as a fact. Again, this ego is known to 
be in a definite form or condition of action or suffering. The 
states are transient, the agent remains. The states are as fleetiDg 
and as transitory as the flying moments ; indeed, they come and 
go more swiftly than any instants which we can count ; the indi- 
vidual self remains unchanged, referring all these changes to 
itself. Again, the ego, in its acting and suffering, is concerned 
with some object. It must have some object to be employed 
upon, either material or mental. One state is as often distin- 
guished from another by its object, as by any thing besides. 
These are the elements which make up that complex whole which 
we call the object of consciousness. 

§ 58. It is a natural question, What is the relation 
of consciousness to each of these essential constituents, *^ a *!°° °f 
either as combined together in a general view, or as each element? of a 
calls forth special and separate attention ? To this j^f 10 * 1 
question we give this general preliminary answer: 
The soul, in consciousness, is directly cognizant of all these ele- 
ments, as entering into every one of its states. It knows them as 
distinguishable from one another, and yet as, in their union, con- 
stituting a single whole. 

Here we observe that, in an act of direct or intuitive knowledge 
like consciousness, it is as essential that the connecting relation? 
should be apprehended, as the parts whbh they bind or connect 
In logical analysis, the parts are considered separately, and tt 
each we assign a separate word or phrase ; but in the synthesis of 
real knowledge the parts are viewed together. The verbal ex- 
pression of a mental state is not a single word, as I, perceive [or! 
love, this apple, each apprehended apart, and then somehow aggre- 
gated into a phrase or proposition ; but it is a finished proposi- 
tion, in all its parts and relations, as, I perceive [or love] 
this apple In other words, we can analyze or separate only 



68 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §§ 59, 60. 

what is given as united in the concrete or real. If the parts and 
connecting relations are not discerned together by an intuitive 
act, they can neither be separated nor united by any other act or 
process. The objects known by consciousness are intuitively 
known. All the materials which mediate or abstract knowledge 
evolves from these objects, the objects must be known already tc 
involve. 

But though these elements are always recognized in every 
object of which we are conscious — i. e., in every conscious mental 
state — they are not regarded with equal attention. According as 
one or other of these elements receives the chief attention and is 
most absorbing, so is each state of consciousness definitely and 
peculiarly marked. We will consider the predominance of each 
of these elements singly and apart. 

§ 59. First let the souVs own activity be the special 

The activity , . „ . . . r 

may be chiefly object oi its own conscious observation. 

The states come and go, they rise and fall, they are 
varying and restless as the waves of the ocean, each pushing- 
forward the one that went before. Moreover, these states are 
the products of the soul's own energy, or the sufferings or joyful 
experiences of its own sensibility. What can it be conscious of, 
if it knows not these ? For these reasons no one has ever doubted 
that the operation or state of the soul is the appropriate object 
of consciousness — is the central element, the element par eminence, 
if the object is believed to be complex ; the sole object, if the ob- 
ject is conceded to be simple. 

§ 60. Second. Of the ego itself we are also di- 
oftK 1 © 1811688 rec ^y conscious. Not only are w T e conscious of the 
varying states and conditions, but we know them to 
be our own states ; i. e., each individual observer knows his 
changing individual states to belong to his individual self, or to 
himself, the individual. The states we know as varying and 
transitory. The self we know as unchanged and permanent. 

It is of the very nature and essence of a psychical state to be 
the act or experience of an individual ego. We are not first con- 
scious of the state or operation, and then forced to look around 
for a something to which it is to be referred, or to which it may 
belong. A mental state which is not produced or felt by an indi- 
vidual self, is as inconceivable as a triangle without three angles, 



§ 60. CONSCIOUSNESS. 69 

or a square without four sides. This relation of the act to the 
self is not inferred, but is directly known. 

The fact of memory proves this beyond dispute. In every act 
of memory we know or believe that the object now recalled was 
formerly before the mind ; in other words, I, the person remember- 
ing, did previously know or experience that which I now recall. 
But how could this be possible, if the first act or state was not 
known, when it occurred, to belong to the same ego which now 
recalls it? This truth has been extensively overlooked or denied. 
Thus Hume says : " For my part, when I enter most intimately 
into what I call myself I always stumble on some particular per- 
ception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, 
pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without 
a perception, and never can observe anything but the percep- 
tion." " If any one, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, 
thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can 
no longer reason with him. . . . He may, perhaps, perceive some- 
thing simple and continued, which he calls himself, though I am 
certain there is no such principle in me." — Human Nature, 
Part iv. sec. 2. Dr. Thomas Reid says : " I am conscious of 
perception, but not of the object I perceive ; I am conscious of 
memory, but not of the object I remember." But he guards 
himself against the conclusion drawn by Hume from their 
common assumption, by insisting that, though consciousness does 
not give us the intuition of self, yet we have a firm belief of the 
reality of the self, through a native and necessary suggestion, 
for " our sensations and thoughts do also suggest the notion of a 
mind, and the belief of its existence and of its relation to our 
thoughts." — Inquiry, chap, ii, § 7. Dugald Stewart says : " We 
are conscious of sensation, thought, desire, volition, but we are 
not conscious of the existence of the mind itself. This is made 
known to us by a suggestion of the understanding consequent on 
the sensation, but so intimately connected with it that it is not 
surprising that our belief of both should be generally referred to 
the same origin." — Phil. Essays, p. i, c. i. Dr. Thomas Brown 
says of a special sensation, as of fragrance : " There will be, in the 
first momentary state, no separation of self and the sensation, 
no little proposition formed in the mind — I feel, or I am con- 
ecious of a feeling, but the feeling and the sentient I, will for the 



70 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 60. 

moment be the same. If the remembrance of the former feeling 
arise, and the two different feelings be considered by the mind al 
once, it will now, by that irresistible law of our nature whicb 
impresses us with the conviction of our identity, conceive the two 
sensations which it recognizes as different in themselves, to have 
belonged to the same human being — that being to which, when 
it has the use of language, it gives the name of self, and in rela- 
tion to which it speaks as often as it uses the pronoun I." — 
Lecture xi. Hamilton says : " On the other hand, as there exists 
no intuitive or immediate knowledge of self as the absolute 
subject of thought, feeling and desire, but, on the contrary, there 
is only possible a deduced, relative and secondary knowledge 
of self as the permanent basis of these transient modifications 
of which we are directly conscious, it follows," etc. — Notes on 
Reid, (H.,) p. 29, b.— Cf Met. Lee. 19, on Mental Unity. 
Mansel dissents from Hamilton on this point. (Prolegom. Log., 
c. v.) " I am immediately conscious of myself, seeing and hearing, 
willing and thinking." James Mill agrees with Brown, etc.: 
" To say that I am conscious of a feeling, is merely to say that I 
feel it. To have a feeling is to be conscious, and to be conscious 
is to have a feeling. To be conscious of the prick of a pin, is 
merely to have the sensation." — (Analysis of the Human Mind, 
Chap, v.) But he corrects himself in another passage, as follows ; 
" The consciousness of the present moment is not absolutely simple, 
for whether I have a sensation or an idea, the idea of what I call 
myself is always inseparably combined with it. The conscious- 
ness, then, of the second of the two moments in the case supposed, 
[the case of remembering a preceding state,] is the sensation 
combined with the idea of myself, which compound I call ' myself 
sentient,'" etc. — (Id. Chap x.) John Stuart Mill says, in the 
lame strain : " My mind is but a series of feelings," and defines it 
ks, " a thread of consciousness," " a series of feelings with a back- 
ground of possibilities of feeling." — (Exam, of the Phil, of Hamilton, 
c. 12; cf Me Cosh, Fundamental Truth, etc., c. 5.) 

It will be found, moreover, that all those writers who deny or 
doubt this, do yet incidentally betray their faith in the reality 
which they by words or reasonings oppose. Dr. Brown, who is 
so earnest in opposing it, cannot thread together the several ex 
periences of the soul's life, without resorting to " the irresbtibls 



§61. NATUKAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 71 

law of our nature which impresses us with the conviction of our 
identity," and James Mill himself is forced in one sentence to 
confess what he stoutly denies in another, " for whether I have 
a sensation or an idea, the idea of what I call myself, is always 
inseparably combined with it." These are more or less distinct 
acknowledgments of that direct knowledge of the ego which enters 
as an essential constituent into every conscious state of the soul. 

§• 61, Third, we inquire still further, What are 
the relations of consciousness to the objects of the consciousness 
psychical acts and states? Is the soul conscious of psychical 
of the objects as truly as it is of the states them- 
selves? When I gaze upon a landscape, and am delighted, am 
I conscious of the landscape which I see, as truly as I am con- 
scious of the act of seeing and of the delight which it gives ? 
It is maintained that it is a gross impropriety to say that we are 
conscious of the landscape, except in the general sense in which 
we use conscious as the equivalent of knowing. Thus Reid says in 
the words already cited : " I am conscious of perception but not 
of the object I perceive, I am conscious of memory, but not of 
the object I remember." 

The truth is, that we are conscious of the object somewhat as 
we are conscious of the ego. The state or operation is the 
central object of apprehension ; but as the state can neither occur 
nor be known except as having a relation to the unchanging ego, 
so each separate state is distinguished in part by its object. This 
is especially true if it is preeminently a state of knowledge. We 
distinguish one such state from another by what we know ; e. g., 
in one moment I perceive a tree, in another a house, etc., i. e., I can- 
not be conscious that I perceive a house or a tree, unless I notice 
the relation of the act itself to the house or tree. 

We do not say that two states of knowledge cannot be dis- 
tinguished subjectively as well as by their objects. We know 
that an act of knowledge never can occur by itself without some 
feeling, desire and will. So far as it is a state of feeling and 
will it is purely subjective. These subjective elements attract 
the notice of consciousness preeminently, and these mark and 
individualize the state to the soul's memory. But when such 
states are described in language or recalled to the thoughts by an 
explicit statement, they are described by their objects Even a stats 



72 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 62 

of the most absorbed feeling is indicated by the object or event 
which excited the emotion. We cannot conceive it possible that 
We should know that we know, enjoy, or choose, without knowing 
what we know, enjoy or choose. In other words, in being con- 
scious of an act or state, we must be conscious of the state cr act 
in relation to, and as therefore including the object. 

We recapitulate thus : The object of consciousness is a state 
-or act of the soul ; this state or act must occur or exist in order 
ihat it may be known • but it does rot exist before it is known in 
the order of time, but only in the order of dependence, or of 
logical necessity. So far as the order of time is concerned, it 
exists while it is known. What is known of this object must 
depend on the nature of the matter to be known, and also on 
the reach or capacity of consciousness to observe it. 

A psychical act or state, as we have seen, is in its nature 
complex, consisting of three elements in intimate relation to 
each other: the ego; the object; the acting or suffering of the 
passing moment. But the act or suffering is inconceivable, 
except as belonging to the ego and denned by the object. Of 
this double relation consciousness must take notice. It must, 
therefore, also take notice of the terms or elements which are 
related. 

The object of § 62. We observe still further, that consciousness 
L°a S stat U e S of SS the object, as contradistinguished from consciousness 
being. tne actj j g a gtate or condition of being, as contrasted 

with an act of knowledge. Knowledge of every kind as has 
been shown, supposes and requires being as its objective correlate. 
The being, known by consciousness, is a spiritual being, a perma- 
nent identical agent or producer of the states and acts which are 
known ; i. e., a being in the eminent and higher sense, substan- 
tial or real being. This the mind knows to be, or to exist, by a 
direct or immediate act of its own. In every act of conscious- 
ness, knowledge is directly confronted with actual being, and 
the being which is known is affirmed to be identical with the 
being which knows. 

The saying of Descartes, Cogito, ergo sum, has 

Fnecial sense . . i i • xi t_ V J 

of 'cogito, ergo preeminent propriety and obvious truth when applied 

to the act of consciousness. It means more than, I 

find myself a thinking being, and therefore I, the thinking being, 



§ 63. ~ NATURAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 73 

exist ; but it means conscius sum, that is, I know directly and 
positively myself as a being. It has been said with eminent 
truth that absolute skepticism is incompatible with the act of con- 
sciousness ; because, if I doubt or question any reality, or what- 
ever reality I doubt or question, I cannot doubt or question that 
I myself doubt or question. The same truth is confirmed by 
the view already taken, that to consciousness as the act, an object 
must be present and known; and this object is an existing being, 
which is known or affirmed by the very act of consciousness to 
exist. 

§ 63. Not only is the reality and validity of being 

The validity of , * ,,.,'/ i . , i • , \ 

relations is also thus established, because involved in the act and 

established. . „ , . 

object oi consciousness, but the relations 01 being 
are as necessarily affirmed. The several states of the soul are 
not only discriminated as diverse from one another, but they are 
known to be like and unlike. They are also known to be pro- 
duced by the soul which is conscious that they exist ; that is, 
they are known under the relation of causation. 

In view of these facts, we need not wonder that even the 
ancient philosophers counted the human soul, thus known by 
and to itself, to be a microcosm or epitome of the great universe. 
In the spirit of man, and in the exercise of the simplest and the 
most essential of its powers, thought and being are both con- 
joined ; the one is confronted with the other, the one is essentia] 
to the other. Thought is perpetually springing out of being, and 
apprehending being to exist — not only simple being, but being 
in all its forms of activity and the relations which they involve. 

Nor should we be surprised to find that all the conceptions 
which are necessary to scientific knowledge — those categories 
which cannot be proved, but which must be assumed — those 
prime relations and first truths on which all our higher in- 
telligence of matter or spirit depends, are affirmed of spiritual 
being in the act of consciousness itself. It is natural to man to 
make himself the measure of the universe — i. e., to take the 
little universe of being which he knows so directly and so well, 
with the relations involved, to be the analogon of the greater 
universe which lies beyond, and which is more indirectly known. 
This is the process by which many explain our belief in the 
authority and universality of the categories or first truths. 
4 



74 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 64. 

§ 64. It has been already stated that conscious- 
ment 6 anT lop ' ness, though natural and necessary to every human 
fcTousne ss. con " soul whose powers are normally developed, is not ex- 
ercised at the beginning of its existence, but only 
after certain conditions and stages of growth have been attained, 
and the power to apply them has been matured. The order of 
this development and maturity may be sketched as follows : 

Ths first activities are those of simple life. These, whether they pertain to 
the body or the soul, are unconscious. All forms of reflex nerve-action, all the 
purely instinctive movements of either body or soul, or of both combined, are 
known to be unattended by conscious apprehension. But all these activities are. 
exercised in great number and for a long time before the experience of sensations. 

As soon as a sensation occurs, whether painful or pleasant, it must be felt. It 
is essential to its very nature to be experienced by a sentient being, and to be 
felt as painful or pleasant. This experience, whether in man or animal, involves 
some sort of possible apprehension of self as the subject of its pain or pleasure. 
This is not consciousness, as we use the term, but only consciousness in its 
lowest and most rudimentary form. By some it is called the feeling as distin- 
guished from the knowledge of self, or self-feeling. As long as the sensations aro 
confused together and are not discriminated, whether they are weak or strong 
the soul remains in this elementary condition of comparative unconsciousness. 
This is the condition of the infant. It is also the condition into which the de- 
veloped man relapses in swooning, distraction, intoxication, or approaching 
sleep. In the infant such a condition cannot be remembered, for reasons which 
we will give in their place. The man can recall it but dimly, and only as he 
measures and imagines the state, by contrast with those of which he is distinctly 
conscious, and which he can clearly recall. 

But when the several sensations are discriminated from one another, the soul 
reaches a higher stage. But even this does not involve consciousness, unless the 
sensations are also discriminated from the self to which they pertain. Observa- 
tion attests that the one is possible without the other. Even the external objects 
that occasion the sensations, may be distinguished from one another and from 
the sensations which attend them, before the soul distinctly recognizes these 
sensations as its own. No fact is more patent to universal observation, than that, 
in infancy and childhood, man is occupied with the objective, with very infre- 
quent cognition of self as contrasted with his sensations or their objects, or with 
the impulse that carries the feelings and actions without. 

As soon as feelings of another character are experienced — emotions proper, 
and not sensations, emotions which are perhaps antagonistic to sensations and 
their impulses — the opportunity is presented for the soul to distinguish its own 
agency and itself as an actor or sufferer, as contrasted with itself as purely sen- 
tient ; i. e., as carried out of itself by its sensations and appetites. The soul fur- 
nishes in itself the condition for that reflex act which we call the conscious discrimi- 
nation of its states as its own. It can know itself as an actor and sufferer, while 
the act of consciousness is not explained by its conditions, and is not developed 
fro'ja nor produced by these conditions. Wo concede that it does not occur bo* 



§ 64. NATURAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 75 

fore these conditions are furnished, and these conditions do not exist till the soul 
has reached a stage of development that is somewhat advanced, and has had 
ample experience of the world without as well as the world within. 

The bahy, new to earth and sky, 

What time his tender palm is pressed 

Against the circle of the breast, 
Has never thought that this is I. 

But as he grows, he gathers much, 

And learns the use of I and me, 

And finds I am not what I see, 
And other than the things I touch; 

So rounds he to a separate mind, 
^ From whence clear memory may begin, 
As thro' the frame that binds him in, 
His isolation grows defined. 

Tenxysox. — In Memoriam. 

The object discerned by the act of consciousness is not, as we have already ob- 
served, the soul itself, a3 a substance or subject, with all its capacities and 
powers ; for, besides those capacities which consciousness apprehends, there are 
others which it does not reach. Even the cause or source of many which it does 
discern are beyond its direct cognition. In all of these operations the sentient 
power acts out of sight, receiving or rejecting those objects for which nature has 
or has not adapted its action. Even after the soul acts and appears as the ego, 
and, as such is the conscious subject of its higher acts, it also acts as the un- 
conscious subject of many others. As the subject of many similar acts and states 
objectively known to the conscious ego, it is called the self; as the agent which 
is actor, and also conscious of individual acts, it is called the ego, or I. Pre- 
eminently it is the ego, or I, when it makes itself manifest in an act of will, as 
the regulator or controller of the blind impulses and desires. 

The act of conscious self-apprehension may also be more or less frequently ex- 
ercised by different men, after the capacity for it has been reached. The condi- 
tions may be more or less favorable for its exercise, after the power has been 
matured. First, the objective conditions may be more ample and energetic in 
one man than in another. The corporeal nature of one may so hold the spirit by 
obtrusive and engrossing sensations as to preclude the possibility of that dis- 
crimination which is the first condition of conscious knowledge. Thus the bodj* 
of the idiot or the half-witted may so preoccupy the energies as almost to di 
tain it in the annualized state. Moral obliquity, especially in early life, may al- 
most literally brutify or sensualize its condition. Various morbid conditions of 
the body may come in at an early period of the soul's development to arrest its 
natural progress, by filling up its experience with continued sensations of weak* 
ness and pain. Even a low energy of vital force may give to consciousness only 
feeble sensational activity and inert impelling forces, which are too unobtrusive 
to elicit discriminating cognition. The occupations, cares and interests may b* 
so material and sordid, as to fill up the life with activities that are solely object 
tive. The psychical nature of one person may also be far richer and more varied 
in its capacities than that 01 another, furnishing the material for conscious ob« 



78 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 65< 

servation that is comparatively copious and inviting. Second, the subjective 
capacity of conscious activity differs in degrees in different persons. The natu- 
ral powers, the acquired facility, and the inclination to look inward, are stronger 
in some than in others; and hence in some men that is a passion which in others 
is rarely and ineffectually performed. Nature, habit, and art exhibit surprising 
diversities and contrasts in this respect. 

On the other hand, the capacity for consciousness is not the product of acci- 
dental conditions or circumstances, nor is it the result of any development from 
any lower existence, but is provided in the nature of man and the designs of his 
Creator. The brute is not self-conscious under the most favorable circumstances, 
nor can he become so as the result of any development whatever. He may be 
like man in the lower stages of being, in the experience of what we call bodily 
sensations and animal appetites ; but he never discriminates one sensation from 
another by a self-conscious act, simply because he has not the capacity. Much 
less does he distinguish the self from its states, because there is no self and no states 
to be thus distinguished. Hence he can, in the proper sense of the word, neither 
remember, nor generalize, nor reason, nor judge, so far as these involve the re- 
ference of acts or objects to himself by appropriate acts and products. He can- 
nox purpose or choose, for a similar reason. Neither the objective conditions of 
these acts are furnished in his own nature, nor is the subjective capacity to dis. 
cern them. 

§ 65. The question has been discussed of late 

Latent modifi- x _ 

cations of con- among Jiinglisn psychologists, whether there can be 
any latent modifications of consciousness. The phrase 
is infelicitous, because apparently self-contradictory — a latent 
modification of that which, in its very essence, is an act or an 
object of knowledge, being apparently, both in word and thought, 
impossible. The truth which the phrase was designed to de- 
scribe is, however, real and important, and deserves to be clearly 
stated. That the soul may act without being conscious of what 
it does, or even that it acts at all, has been already established. 
That these unconscious acts affect those acts of which it is con- 
scious, and their objects, is equally evident. We have already 
distinguished between those processes by which the soul, so tc 
speak, prepares objects for its conscious apprehension, and the 
acts of knowing these objects when thus prepared. All effects 
of this kind are accomplished by modifications of the soul 
which are latent — i. e., unknown to the direct inspection of con- 
sciousness. 

Many of the instances cited as examples of latent modifications 
of consciousness are only examples of objects observed with less 
attention — objects comparatively unheeded, which may be after- 
ward revived with greater distinctness. For example, I write 



§ 65. NATURAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 77 

nastily, to-day, a word or a phrase which is incorrect or ungram- 
roatical. I do not notice the error, but I recall it to-morrow, 
and notice the mistake by an act of memory. Or, I see a per- 
son, and, at the time, do not notice some article of his dress or 
some peculiarity in his look or language, but recall either dis< 
tinctly on reflection. Or some part of a total perception, as of & 
3rowded and active company, or a varied landscape, apparently 
3scapes my notice. It is a mere accessory, a subordinate, nearly 
overlooked in comparison with the central figures or objects ; and 
yet it may serve as a link in the restoration of a train of con- 
nected objects. These objects are not latent, though very little 
attended to. Leibnitz (Nouveaux JEssais, ii. c. i.) cites the case 
of the sound of the sea as an example. A single wave does not 
affect the ear, but only many, when combined. And yet each 
wave must contribute its share in affecting the conscious mind, 
or the whole could not be heard. A distinction is to be made in 
this instance between the impulse of a single wave upon the 
organ of hearing, and the experience of the sensation. The ac- 
tion of many waves together may be required to bring the organ 
into the condition necessary for the sensation in question, or any 
other. To the total effect upon the organ each wave may con- 
tribute its part, without moving the consciousness in the least, 
even latently. 

The general truth cannot, however, be controverted, that the 
unconscious and conscious processes of the soul act and react on 
one another continually, and that neither should be overlooked in 
the science which explains its phenomena. Consciousness, though 
the most important, is, therefore, not the only source of our 
knowledge of the soul, and its powers and laws. 



78 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 66k 

CHAPTER II. 

THE REFLECTIVE, OR PHILOSOPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 

§ 66. Hitherto we have considered consciousness 

The reflective . . 

consciousness as the common endowment and universal character 
istic of the human race. Every human being is 
capable of being conscious of his psychical states. Every man 
who is normally developed is actually conscious of these states at 
a very early period of his existence. 

We have, however, distinguished and defined another species 
of consciousness. This is the artificial, or secondary conscious- 
ness, and it is attained by comparatively few. Though all men 
can understand and appreciate the descriptions and appeals of 
the dramatist and the orator, there are but few who can originate 
and enforce them. The consciousness which discovers and teaches 
is properly called the philosophical and reflective consciousness. 
We proceed to consider more particularly, " What is the reflec- 
tive consciousness ? and, What are its relations to the natural con- 
sciousness ?" 

The reflective consciousness is the natural consciousness exer- 
cised with earnest and persistent attention. It has already been 
shown that every intellectual power may be used with a greater 
or less degree of energy. We have also seen that the develop- 
ment of the natural consciousness through its successive stages is 
but the development of an increase of attention. When the 
habit is carried to a still higher degree of energy, and the subjec- 
tive states and activities become familiar and frequent objects of 
contemplation, the natural or spontaneous becomes the artificial 
or reflective consciousness. 

It may help us still further to accept the possibility and to un- 
derstand the nature of consciousness as modified by attention, to 
consider it in the two forms of the abnormal and the ethical self- 
consciousness. 

The abnormal or the morbid self-consciousness is 

con^ckluTneT 1 distinguished by any degree of attention to one's own 

aduits dren and psychical state which interferes with the normal use and 

development of the powers. Children are appointed 



§ 66. THE REFLECTIVE, OR PHILOSOPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 79 

by nature to an objective, and, in one sense, an animal life. But 
now and then a child, through an unfortunate bias, or some ill- 
judged training, has learned to look inward upon itself with 
unnatural precocity. As a consequence, the subjective pre- 
dominates over the objective, the tendency to reflect hinders the 
power to acquire ; and that easy and spontaneous play of ob- 
3ervation, memory, imagination, wit, and invention, which is the 
-strength and the charm of childhood, is excluded or hindered. 

Among adults frequent examples occur of a morbid or unnatural 
attention to the inner life. Hypochondriacs, who are haunted 
by disturbing sensations which proceed from bodily disease, till 
their attention is so absorbed in watching these sensations that it 
cannot respond to the objects that are fitted to amuse and incite 
to action, furnish one example. Men who have inherited or in- 
dulged a sensitive nature till it has become their tyrant ; who 
watch their feelings with a selfish exclusiveness, or who pamper 
them with a dainty fastidiousness, like Rousseau, may become 
half insane through brooding over their own exaggerated sufferings 
and wrongs. 

Another type of the abnormal consciousness is that which 
results from an egoistic thoughtfulness of one's appearance, man- 
ners, words, looks, actions or achievements, which shows itself io 
the countless forms of affectation that are displayed in manners, 
art, or literature. So common has this become in the artifi- 
cial society of modern times, that it has given a new sense to 
the words conscious and consciousness, with and without self as 
a prefix. 

The ethical type is that attention to one's innei 
The ethical s t a + e6 which is applied in view of a moral standard. 

consciousness. ±r 

for the purposes of self-correction and self-improve- 
ment. That this is not abnormal is obvious from the fact that 
the word reflection, which originally signified any reflex action 
of the soul, has acquired the secondary signification of its use and 
application for ethical purposes. This kind of reflective conscious- 
ness always brings with it some intellectual discipline. Chris- 
tianity has trained the intellect of the human race to this ac- 
tivity, and hence has been so efficient in educating and elevating 
the masses of men, even when it has furnished little formal in« 
tellectual culture. 



80 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 67. 

§ 67. The type of the reflective consciousness with 
which we are specially concerned is that which is SUave"^ 
properly called philosophical, because it is used for SaJrcterized 
scientific ends. In common with the types already attention tent 
referred to, it involves attention. But if the atten- 
tion is to yield important scientific results, it must be employed in 
a peculiar way, with distinct reference to peculiar ends, and with 
the iid of special appliances. Its characteristics are the follow 
mg- 

First : It is persistent in its observations. It not only attends 
to the phenomena of the soul as inclination or duty may decide, 
but it attends continuously, in order that it may carefully ob- 
serve and accurately remember. But how can the mind attend 
continuously to the same mental state? Of material objects 
many of the phenomena are permanent ; they retain an un- 
changing identity. We can observe them again and again, 
till we are certain that we have attained a definite impression, 
and can bring away a satisfying recollection. But the mental 
phenomenon is but for an instant. If we look for it, in order that we 
may look at it the second time, it is not there. It existed only 
so long as, by our own act, we gave it being ; and when that ac- 
tivity is intermitted, the object which Ave would fain examine by 
a second look is no longer and nowhere to be found. The only 
resource which we have, is to prolong the state by continually 
renewing or repeating it. To this act or effort of prolongation 
Locke gives the name of retention, and this he describes as a 
peculiar mental act {Essay, B. ii. c. x. § 1). But can we pro- 
long a single state beyond its assigned period of time ? Is not a 
single state limited to a definite period of duration ? The ques- 
tion is trivial, and it is of no consequence how it is answered. 
Whether we can prolong a state or not, we can certainly repeat 
it again and again, allowing no other activity to intervene. 
What we fail to notice at one view, we observe in another. What 
we only faintly apprehend at the first sight, we fix and confirm 
At the second. What we observe incorrectly or partially in one 
act, we discern truly and completely in the act which follows. 
The uninterrupted repetition of similar psychical states is the sub- 
stitute for literal continuity in the object observed, and hence is a 
distinguishing characteristic of the philosophic consciousness. It 



§ 69. THE REFLECTIVE, OR PHILOSOPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 81 

is because the mind, as it were, turns thus in upon itself, that this 
effort of consciousness is termed reflection — i. e., the bending 
back or retortion of the soul on itself. It is because this repeti- 
tion of the object, and retortion in the act, are found to be practi- 
cally necessary, in order to any accurate and successful observa- 
tion of consciousness, that consciousness, the act, has been sup- 
posed to be a remembrance, a sort of second thought, and the 
power has been resolved into memory. 

Other advantages are secured by this repetition of the mind's 
activity, and one especially, that it is capable of being viewed 
more coolly. If I am absorbed by the beauty of a splendid pic- 
ture, or a glorious sunset, I shall not be likely, when these objects 
first break upon my sight, to give much attention to the act or 
process by which I view them in order to ascertain its exact 
nature, or to the emotion with which I am literally rapt or car- 
ried out of myself, to discover whether delight prevails over 
wonder. But when my curiosity is satisfied, and my feelings are 
calmer, then I have some energy to withdraw from the act of see- 
ing and the feeling of admiration, which I can employ in reflex 
attention to the act and the emotion. 

§68. Second: The philosophical consciousness is ItattendgtoalI 
comprehensive in its observations. It brings within th « psychical 

* ° phenomena. 

its field of view all the phenomena of the soul. Its 
object being to know all its powers, it must of course consider 
and attend to all its phenomena. The philosopher may not, 
like the man of morbid or abnormal tendencies, give an exclu- 
sive and one-si ^ed regard to certain feelings, or to a few species 
of intellectual acts ; but he must regard all the variety of expe- 
riences of which his being is capable, omitting none, being partial 
to none, doing full justice to each and to all. This principle is 
accepted as a cardinal maxim of the inductive method. To 
whatever object-matter this method is applied, it is essential that 
all the facts should ba fairly considered. Nature is an honest 
witness, and stands pledged to tell not only the truth, but the 
whole truth. Those who examine the witness are equally bound 
to hear the whole truth, and to open their minds attentively to 
consider it. 

§ 69. Third : The philosophical consciousness at- 
tends to psychical phenomena, in order that it may ciSEhS 
compare them ; and i£ compares these phenomena, in 



82 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §71 

order that it may unite those which are alike, and distinguish 
those which are unlike. Its aim is scientific knowledge ; and 
science is knowledge that is comparative and discriminating. In 
other words, it is classified and arranged knowledge. 

The power to discern relations sharply, surely, and quickly, 
may to a certain extent be a special endowment or gift of nature. 
Its successful exercise or application, however, is the result of 
attentive comparison. The observer must bring the facts toge* 
ther, placing them side by side. He must then consider them in 
their connections, leaving the various relations to suggest them- 
selves. 

§ 70. Fourth : The philosophical consciousness iiv> 
expiams them terprets the phenomena which it unites and discrimi- 
}2wB? wer8 and nates. In other words, it explains them by a refer- 
ence to powers and laws. But the classification of phe- 
nomena is a condition of science, rather than science itself. It is 
science begun, but not science completed. The object of science 
is to ascertain what is familiarly called the nature, essence, or 
constitution, whether of the material or the spiritual beings with 
which it has to do. It may not be easy to define what is intended 
by these terms. It is obvious, however, that something more is 
meant than a bundle of classified phenomena. The phenomena 
are supposed to indicate or reveal some power which the being 
possesses. They are to the power as an effect is to its cause. 
The power is conceived as a capacity to cause some result or phe- 
nomenon. Hence science is said to be the investigation of causes, 
principles, or powers. The scientific consciousness, therefore, 
reflects, that it may refer phenomena to their causes or powers in 
the soul. 

But again ; The powers or agents of nature act according to 
laws. These laws are fixed methods or rules according to which 
phenomena occur, when the conditions of their presence are fur- 
nished. The laws of the soul are, therefore, to be discovered and 
established, in order that the science of the soul may be complete, 
and the aims of the philosophical consciousness may be accom- 
plished. 

Relatione ot § 71 * ® UT seconcl inq uir y respected the relations of 
toe pi«iosophi- the natural to the philosophical consciousness. Theso 

3al to tho nutu- *■ A , _ _ -_ . , 

mi roiwceus- relations need to be carefully considered. JN either 

pess. _ 

the natural, nor the reflective consciousness creates 



§ 71. THE REFLECTIVE, OR PHILOSOPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 8:1 

these facts ; each only observes them ; the one cursorily and to lit- 
tle scientific purpose, the other patiently and with comprehensive 
and sagacious comparisons. Psychology does not add newly-cre* 
ated phenomena to our stock of knowledge, nor even in one sense 
newly-discovered facts. It has to do with old and in one sense 
well-known facts, only carefully and comprehensively observed and 
sxhibited in new relations. The facts, and many of the relations 
of the facts, are as obvious, and in one sense as truly known, to 
the peasant as to the philosopher. When the philosopher teaches 
the peasant, he does not impart new knowledge concerning the 
soul, by mere testimony, on the authority of his own observations 
and experiments, or those of others ; he simply teaches him to 
attend to the phenomena of his own inner self. He says to him, 
Look, and you will find this or that. In so far, he only teaches 
him what in one sense he knew before. 

-But does not the reflective consciousness discover and impart 
new knowledge? Most certainly. It by no means follows, be- 
cause the natural furnishes to the reflective consciousness all its 
facts, and the reflective must go to the natural consciousness for 
all its materials, that the philosophic consciousness makes no im- 
portant additions to the stock of human knowledge. The same 
starry heavens are pictured on the eye of the stupid or supersti- 
tious savage, as upon that of the scientific astronomer ; but how 
much more does the one see in them than the other ! A simple 
child and a skilful engineer look upon a steam-engine, both in 
one sense seeing the same objects ; but how much more does the 
one perceive in the engine than the other, of the powers, the laws 
and the uses of each separate part, and of their action with re- 
spect to the whole. The same natural consciousness is the com- 
mon possession of the race ; but how great is the store of impor- 
tant scientific truth which reflective thought Las superinduced 
upon, and discovered in it. The reflective consciousness imparts 
new knowledge as it fixes the attention upon phenomena which 
the natural consciousness fails to observe, and as it places these 
phenomena in novel relations by comparison, classification and 
explanation. 

The difference between the knowledge given by the natural 
and that acquired through the philosophical consciousness, is well 
illustrated by the individual conception of the ego, which is com* 



84 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §72. 

mon to all, and the generalized conception of the self which is 
the product of reflection. In every act and condition of the 
natural consciousness there is necessarily present, the recognition 
of the ego, as the unchanging subject of the changing psychical 
states. It is plain that neither reflection nor memory can create or 
evolve this knowledge ; for both reflection and memory pre-sup- 
pose and require it as their essential condition. It must be given 
to the mind by the intuition of the natural consciousness, or it is 
not given at all. But the intuition is of the individual ego — 
the one single being to which, and to which alone, belong the 
various and changing states which are its experiences and its 
doings, or rather into which it is constantly passing by suffering 
and by action. 

The conception of the self, which is expressed in language 
and defined by its constituent elements or characteristics, is the 
generalized product of the philosophical consciousness. A self 
is one of the individual agents or egos, which, so to speak, is like 
every other, in those common characteristics or powers which 
make them alike. It is, however, an ego stripped of its individu- 
ality by the process of abstraction, and considered only in those 
attributes and qualities which it has in common with others. 
The natural consciousness must begin with the apprehension of 
the ego, as the condition of knowing a single mental state. It 
cannot connect one state with another except by means of this 
identical ego. We begin with the natural consciousness of the 
individual ego, and end with the philosophical concept of the self ; 
i.e., with its nature and capacities as developed to the reflective 
consciousness. 

§ 72. The relations of the natural to the philo- 
guage in re- sophic consciousness cannot be fully appreciated, 
unless we advert to the office of language with respect 
to each. Language is of essential aid in giving precision and 
permanence to the observations and results of the reflective con- 
sciousness. The subject-matter, as we have seen, is fleeting. It 
endures but for an instant. The state which we observe and 
record no sooner appears, than it is gone. But we can give it 
outward form and definite shape by embodying it in words 
and expressing it in speech. The frequent use of the word^ 
makes familiar the state and the discerned relations of which it 






§ 72. THE REFLECTIVE, OR PHILOSOPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 85 

is both the symbol and the record. The thought, however 
evanescent, is held before the mind for the purposes of com- 
parison and philosophy, when the word is often sounded to the 
ear or pictured before the eye. Within the sharply-cut outlines 
of language, psychical objects are so presented that we can avoid 
a crowded, feeble, or bewildered gaze, when we would summon 
our energies to compare, classify, and explain. 

But language neither creates phenomena nor furnishes observa- 
tions. It simply records both, and directs and stimulates others 
to repeat like efforts of thought, each for himself. To attempt to 
observe without language, is to reject the aid which nature fur- 
nishes to our hand, and to the use of which it prompts us by an 
impulse which we cannot resist if we would. But we should 
ever remember that language is only an aid, and that the ready 
use -of it either by ourselves or others cannot release us from 
the obligation to think and observe, to consider attentively 
and reflectively judge the states of our own souls, to reproduce 
and study which the words of others simply direct and aid us. 
We ought especially to guard ourselves against the liability to 
be imposed on by the use of a refined and technical terminology, 
or the exhibition of a well-rounded and carefully-adjusted system. 
Technical language is essential to the use of the reflective con- 
sciousness, but it is not nearly so certain to exhibit the facts 
just as they are, with the beliefs and relations which they involve 
as the languag3 of the natural consciousness or the utterances of 
common life. 

Indeed, as an expression of psychological facts and 
a touchstone of psychological theories, the language of common nfo 

P i.n . n t i it sometimes the 

oi common life is iar more worthy to be trusted than most trust- 
the language of the schools. It is the outspeaking 
of those beliefs and feelings, of which man is naturally conscious 
and which he therefore spontaneously expresses. It is the un- 
constrained embodiment of all the experiences of his inner self; 
the subtle robe which the spirit is continually weaving for ita 
inner processes. Each fold and adjustment is a natural and ne- 
cessary product. Not one is assumed for a purpose. The lan^ 
guage of the people is free from all those biassing influences 
which are incident to speculation, by reason of preconceived 
theories, whether these are fondly cherished by their originator, 



86 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §72. 

or traditionally accepted from revered teachers; whether 
adopted or defended through pride of opinion, the tenacity 
of consistency, or the heat of controversy. It is expressed in 
too great a variety of forms, and under circumstances too dissimi- 
lar to admit the supposition of a common prejudice or a common 
interest. For these reasons we accept the common discourse of 
men as expressing the unbiassed convictions of those who are 
competent to discern and decide upon the truth. 

" But are uncultivated men competent to understand and decide 
upon such truths as are in question among philosophers ? Let 
it be granted that their language expresses their own judgments, 
and that these judgments are worthy to be trusted as far as they 
go. But do they reach the questions and distinctions of the 
schools ? Can common men understand these questions and dis- 
tinctions ? And if they cannot understand their import, how can 
they decide upon their validity or their truth ?" These inquiries 
are often urged, in the way of exception and reply to this view 
of the importance and authority of the language of common life. 
The answer is obvious, and ought, as it seems to us, to be decisive. 
The facts which the philosopher seeks to discover are the facts 
or phenomena which are common to all men, and of which all 
men are actually conscious. They are not the phenomena which 
are experienced exclusively by philosophers, but those which are 
co-extensive with the experience of the human race. What all 
men experience when they know or feel, they will be likely to 
express in language; for they cannot know or feel, without 
knowing that they know and feel. So far, then, as they attend 
to these processes, and express in language what they discern, 
they are likely to express the real facts which consciousness dis- 
cerns ; and these are the very facts which the philosopher desires 
to know. 

To detect and correct the mistakes of philosophy, the un- 
biassed and unreflecting language of common life is often one of 
the most efficient instrumentalities. The questions are often 
grave and difficult. What are the elementary facts of human 
experience? What does analysis show to be the real and the ulti- 
mate elements in our knowing and feeling? To answer questions 
like these, there is no readier and surer expedient than to ask, 
How do men express themselves all the world over, when they 



§ 73. THE REFLECTIVE, OR PHILOSOPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 87 

have no theory to maintain and no points to carry ? What are 
the unthinking utterances of common men ? Language we say is 
thought made visible. But thought is belief that something is 
true. The language of common life is, then, the beliefs of un- 
biassed men made visible, concerning points in regard to which 
we simply desire to ascertain the testimony of their unbiassed 
consciousness. 

§ 73. The actions of men are also of great im- 
portance in ascertaining what are the real beliefs of mental™ 8 an 
men. Their actions speak louder than their words. ITtrtthT '^ 
When the actions of men can only be explained on 
the supposition that they are conscious of certain knowledges or 
believe certain facts which they may deny in their philosophical 
speculations, we conclude that their philosophy is defective or 
wrong. We appeal from the propositions and reasonings of the 
reflective consciousness, to those actual beliefs of the natural con- 
sciousness which their actions demonstrate that they hold. 
When men act persistently and habitually as if they believed 
certain facts were true, we cannot doubt that they do believe 
them, however they may seek to persuade themselves or others to 
the contrary. 

These thoughts suggest the truth, which ought ever to be kept 
in mind and applied, that the teacher of psychology must appeal 
for the truth of his assertions to the consciousness of the learner. 
He can communicate nothing upon authority. His duty is to 
ascertain and classify and interpret the phenomena of his own 
soul, and to set forth the processes and the results in a manner 
so clear and so self-evidencing that his pupils will be enabled to 
consult their own consciousness as he proceeds, and to find in it a 
confirmation of all which he propounds. Whatever is asserted 
by the teacher or guide, should be constantly met with the in- 
quiry, Is this confirmed by my experience, or rendered probable 
by the analogous facts which this experience furnishes ? The 
testimony of others, and the authority of their opinions, should 
influence us greatly, not to change our opinions against the 
evidence of consciousness, but to revise these opinions with care, 
and often to suspect the exactness or the candor of our own ob- 
gervations, whenever the weight of authority is against our 



88 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §74 

convictions. But in psychology, simple authority has no weight 
against the final decision of consciousness itself. 

§ 74. To reach this decision, two conditions are 
reach?ng 0n the necessary : First, that we fully understand the ques- 
conSSousnesI tions which we are to decide, in their entire import 
and all the relations which they involve ; and second* 
that we patiently and candidly use all the appliances and teste 
which are at hand to determine the answer. The greatest practi- 
cal difficulty in settling questions in psychology arises from the 
circumstance that the student does not, first and foremost, make 
himself familiarly acquainted with the questions which are to be 
decided. He too often assumes that he fully understands what 
he has only imperfectly mastered. Or if he apprehends the 
point in question for a moment, he fails to make it so familiar as 
is necessary in order to view it in all its relations, and to decide 
with a full and distinct appreciation of its entire import. Men are 
reluctant to bestow this preliminary reflection, because they think 
that they are already fully acquainted with the question in dis- 
cussion, and the terms and distinctions which it involves. 

All men know something about their own souls, and are able 
to pronounce with confidence upon many questions that are in 
controversy. They therefore conclude that they understand every 
question as soon as it is propounded, and are often in haste to 
decide, before they have fairly ascertained what the question is. 
Hence the misunderstandings and disputes between men who are 
apparently in earnest to discover the truth ; hence the warmth 
with which each disputant maintains his opinion, and the obsti- 
nacy with which he defends it against attack. Each man is 
quite certain that v/hat he has in mind is true ; but is he equally 
sure that his antagonist and himself have the same thing in 
mind? or that either has all and no more in mind than is 
properly expressed by the terms? All men know something 
about psychology, therefore many men decide upon any question 
which comes before them before they have been careful to learn 
what its import is. All men are theologians and metaphysi- 
cians by nature; therefore they conclude that there is no question 
in theology or philosophy which they are not at once competent 
to decide. They hastily and confidently pronounce upon the prob* 



§ 75. THE REFLECTIVE, OR PHILOSOPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 89 

lem before they are fully possessed of the terms, the data, or the 
means of solving it. 

§ 75. These considerations explain in part the 
apparent paradox which is presented in the claim, fiyjfigjfi 
on the one side, that the facts of consciousness are ^Sa. qgy ex ~ 
the most certain of all facts, and in the notorious 
iact, on the other, that many of the simplest and most fundamental 
principles in psychology are yet undecided, while its philosophical 
theories are endless themes for never-settled controversy. 

The claim is a just one. The facts of consciousness are the 
most certain of all facts. The objects which consciousness pre- 
sents are, if possible, more real and better attested than the objects 
of sense. We can question whether the eye and the ear do not 
deceive us ; but we cannot doubt whether we perform the acts 
of seeing and hearing. We may question whether these objects 
are what they seem to be, but not whether certain psychical acts 
are in reality performed. We may doubt whether this or that 
object be a reality or a phantasm, but we cannot doubt that we 
doubt. Nothing in the universe is so certain, and deserves so 
well to be trusted, as the psychical phenomena of which each 
man is conscious. 

On the other hand, the fact adduced in objection cannot be 
disputed. Psychology is unsettled, and every treatise which 
professes to give the facts of the soul in a scientific form, abounds 
in criticisms of theories that are still adhered to, and that are 
maintained by eminent writers. How can this fact be recon- 
ciled with the claims to superior clearness and certainty that are 
asserted for the facts of consciousness ? 

The positions which we have laid down in respect to the rela- 
tions of the natural to the reflective consciousness, enable us tc 
reconcile this apparent inconsistency. First, the truth deserves 
attention, that there is as much vagueness and dispute in respect 
to the less obvious conceptions and relations of material objects, 
as in respect to the more recondite relations of psychical phe- 
nomena. The obvious facts and relations of matter are accepted 
without controversy, and are described in popular language. 
Those which are less obvious, or which involve nice observation, 
careful discrimination, or some speculative inference, are quite 
as much in controversy as are the obvious phenomena of the 



90 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 76. 

soul when these are subjected to philosophical elaboration. The 
metaphysics of mathematics, of physics, of chemistry, are as 
unsettled as the metaphysics of psychical facts. It is because 
psychology always resolves itself into metaphysics, that psychology 
always rushes into controversy. 

Moreover, it not only concerns itself with its own metaphysics— 
ithose which are appropriate to its own facts — but it shoulders the 
metaphysics of all the material sciences, and transfers to its own 
arena the smoke and dust that properly belong to the doubtful 
questions in other fields, and therefore incurs the special reproach 
to which we have alluded. One reason why psychology is 
always vague and unsettled, is that it attempts more than the 
physical sciences, going more deeply than they into the philoso- 
phy of its appropriate facts. It is also true that it is not so easy 
to shape our philosophy to our facts, nor to test our philosophy 
by our facts, in the psychical as in the physical sciences. This 
leads us to notice the peculiar difficulties which the student of 
psychology must expect to encounter. 

They are the following : 

§ 76. First : The objects of contemplation are not, 
cuities in the" as in the material world, permanent objects, to which 
eoui. y ° e the mind can come and go, so as to bestow repeated 
observations, till every feature and relation Jjas been 
carefully and minutely examined. In the science of the soul, 
the objects — i. e., the phenomena, cease to be, while consciousness 
surveys them. The soul has at its command only a given quantity 
of energy, which it must divide between each direct activity and 
the consciousness which accompanies it. The energy employed 
in knowing or feeling, i. e., in producing the material for the in- 
spection of consciousness, must consequently be withdrawn from 
the activity of inspection ; any special effort to attend to our pro- 
cesses involves a corresponding weakening of the activity to 
which we summon ourselves to attend. Material objects become 
more vivid and distinct the more keenly the attention is fixed 
upon them ; but the objects of consciousness are dissipated before 
the concentrated gaze which would master their secrets. The 
repeated creation of a similar object for the subsequent applica- 
tion of consciousness is an imperfect substitute for the continued 
examination of the game object. 



§ 76. THE REFLECTIVE, OR PHILOSOPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 91 

Second : Two observers, and, if need be, twenty, or twenty 
thousand, can examine and reexamine the same material object. 
But the objects of the soul can be surveyed by a single observer 
for a single instant only. If many observers agree to examine 
in order to analyze an object which they conceive to be the same, 
it is sometimes difficult for them to be entirely sure that the 
objects before their minds are identical in fact. 

Third : The testimony or report which one observer brings from 
nis own examination, avails little as a substitute for personal 
inspection by the student himself. Should the latter even confide 
entirely in the competence and the candor of another party, he 
needs to observe for himself in order to be sure of the identity 
of the object concerning which he accepts the testimony of 
another witness than himself. 

Fourth : Objects of sense are clearly distinguished from and 
set over against the soul that observes them. In the very act of 
observation the soul separates them from itself. Objects of the 
soul are known not to be severed in fact from the soul which ob- 
serves. For the soul attentively to view its own states as objects 
to itself, there is required a special and constrained effort. " The 
understanding," says Locke, " like the eye, while it makes us see 
and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it re- 
quires art and pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own 
object." 

Fifth : The act of reflection, or second-thinking, for the sole 
purpose of examining the nature of any act or state already expe- 
rienced, is especially artificial, and against nature, for the reason 
that men usually act for some direct motive of use, enjoyment, or 
duty, and, in thus acting, their look must necessarily be outward 
and objective. It is necessary, if men would act with interest 
and energy, that their feelings be strongly aroused by some existing 
object. But to reproduce the act a second time, or its pale reflec- 
tion, for the sole purpose of seeing of what sort or nature it is, is 
not natural, because most men are not greatly interested thoroughly 
and scientifically to know what their actions are. Or, if they 
are interested in this as as an end, yet the reproduction, and the 
continuation through successive reproductions of an act or state, 
for the mere object of examining its nature, is embarrassed by 
the difficulty of reproducing it without the excitement of its 



92 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 76. 

original motive. We perceive, remember, and imagine, — we hope 
and fear, choose and reject, naturally and readily enough, when 
the objects arouse and excite us ; but to perceive and re-perceive, 
to hope and fear again and again, simply that we may know 
more exactly how it seems or what it is to perform or experience 
these states, are, at best, forced and unnatural efforts. Nothing 
but the deepest convictions of the dignity and value of the results, 
in the acquisition of intellectual discipline and the advancement 
of psychological science, can impel to the earnest undertaking 
of such efforts, and the patient prosecution of them to a successful 
issue. 

Sixth : Material objects invite to an analysis by their obtrusive 
likenesses and differences. The phenomena of the soul do not 
present such obvious occasions for discernment. Material objects 
as it were, indicate by dividing lines, by intersecting seams, by 
salient and projecting points, the sections into which they readily 
divide themselves under the eye of analysis. Indeed, Nature herself 
is continually separating and combining these objects before our 
eyes, changing color and form, disintegrating and throwing apart 
materials mechanically united, as when the frost breaks up and 
rolls out the different ingredients of a rock ; or she decomposes the 
ingredients chemically united, as when, by fermentation or solvents, 
gases and precipitates are evolved. The so-called five senses so 
soon as they are applied together or in succession to any object, 
at once suggest five sets of qualities or attributes, to say nothing 
of the ever recurring relations of extension and number. 

To the analysis of the phenomena of the soul there are no such 
forward promptings of nature. A psychical state, when viewed 
by consciousness, does not suggest diverse attributes or relations. 
To bring these to light, it must be brought into comparison with 
states like and unlike itself. These must be recalled by memory, 
and vividly reproduced to the imagination. One state must be 
artificially confronted with another, for the sake of evolving some 
common points of likeness or contrast. 

All these circumstances combined explain the inherent difficul- 
ties of philosophical self-observation, and the slow progress and 
uncertain conquests of the science of the soul in contrast with the 
rapid advances and the certain results of the sciences of mat- 
ter. The history of psychology, attests that its progress though 



§ 77. SENSE-PERCEPTION. 93 

slow is real, and that its acquisitions, though often disputed, are 
more and more assured. 



CHAPTER III. 

SENSE-PERCEPTION : THE CONDITIONS AND THE PROCESS. 

§ 77. From consciousness, the faculty or form of 
presentative knowledge which is concerned with the Sn^dSed" 
objects of spirit and their relations, we proceed to | u ? s i2 m ~ 
the second, which is employed upon the objects and 
relations of matter. We define sense-perception as that power 
of the intellect by which it gains the knowledge of material 
objects. It is also called sensible perception, or simply, percep^ 
tion. We apply these terms to the power, the act, and even 
to the object. Thus we say, Man is endowed with percep- 
tion ; i. 6., with the power to perceive. We say, My perception 
of the color or sound was clear and vivid — describing the act of 
perceiving. We also ask, Do you recall certain perceptions, as 
of color or form ? — emphas : zing the object. 

The terms to perceive and perception, are applied freely to 
other acts and objects of knowledge besides those which require 
the agency of the senses. We are said to perceive mathematical 
distinctions, the drift and force of reasoning, the design of a 
machine, and the purpose of an antagonist. But perception, in 
the technical sense, is appropriated to the knowledge of material 
objects. This knowledge is acquired by means of the senses, 
and hence, we call it sensible perception, or, more briefly, sense- 
perception. 

Sense-perception is called into activity first of 

77 7 /• 7 t • -i i i Is developed 

all the powers of the intellect. It is educated and earliest of au 
fully developed in our earliest years, at a period 
and by processes which we cannot distinctly recall to 

memory. Seems to be tha 

But though this power is developed so early and most familiar - 

. - ° r . n „ l J Is not the most 

exercised so constantly, and, at first view, seems so easily under- 
easy to be understood ; it is far from easy to analyze 



94 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 77. 

its elements, or to explain its processes. To understand sense- 
perception, we must study the body as well as the mind ; we must 
trace out, and, as it were, unravel the subtle connections by 
which the two are united ; we must show how far the one is 
dependent on the other ; what each furnishes towards the result, 
and what are the separable acts or processes in the action of 
each. For these and other reasons, it naturally receives the 
earliest attention in the study of the intellectual powers. The 
processes of sense-perception seem to most men to be the most 
familiar and the best understood of all their intellectual acts. 
Some of the senses are all the while in action. Sense-perceptions 
are present in our loftiest speculations and our most refined rea- 
sonings. The world of sense holds man to its realities in the 
most ethereal of his nights, and never ceases to be the dark or 
radiant background to the most vivid pictures of his fancy. 
Sensations visit man in sleep. They disturb or soothe his repose. 
They haunt him in his very dreams. With sensations and sense- 
perceptions man begins and ends his earthly existence. 

The first requisite to a correct theory of percep- 
from other tion is to separate the act from every other with 
which it is likely to be confounded. It is not uri : 
natural to suppose that much, if not all, of the knowledge we 
have of material objects, is gained by this process alone. A 
more careful examination shows that we gain very much of our 
knowledge of these objects by the exercise of the other and 
higher intellectual powers. 

For example, we take an orange: and inquire first 
m ^ter le n.f * what acts of knowledge in respect to it are not acts 
perceptSn! ense " of perception ; and second, what knowledge is pro- 
perly ascribed to this power. We first look at the 
orange, and immediately supply the half which we do not see — 
the portion of the sphere which is hidden. We know, or believe, 
the orange to be spherical. The part which we supply we do 
not perceive by the eye of the body ; we only image it to the 
" mind's eye." This is an act of imagination or representation, 
but not an act of perception. We can separate its form, as spheri- 
cal, from all material reality, and can construct the abstract or 
mathematical sphere for the mind to consider and analyze. We 
can reflect on its properties and its relations to the circle by the 



§ 77. SENSE-PERCEPTION. 95 

revolution of which it is conceived to be produced. The dis- 
cernment of the mathematical forms, properties and relations, 
which may be applied to the orange is not perception. We 
know, or believe, that its sensible qualities, as of taste, color, 
feeling, smell, are inherent in or belong to the something which 
we call their substance. The knowledge of the orange as sub- 
stance and qualities is not necessarily involved in perception, 
We observe that other objects possess qualities like some of those 
which belong to the. orange — as yellow, round, etc. — and are 
therefore properly classed with and receive the same appella- 
tion. But classification and naming are not included in percep- 
tion. We can know that this fruit has been produced by the 
'powers and under the laws of vegetable life ; knowledge of this 
sort is not essential to perception. We can know, by reasoning, 
that it will produce certain effects if eaten, or used in illness ; 
but this we do not know by simple perception. We can go still 
further, and know, or certainly believe, that it is adapted to and 
was designed for certain uses or ends ; as to minister comfort and 
afford nutriment to man. The knowledge of the uses and designs 
of the orange is not included in sense-perception. 

It is evident that all these acts of knowledge w , x 

o What are acts 

may be performed with respect to the orange, of sense-per- 
and that none of them are acts of simple sense-per- 
ception. It is equally clear that they presuppose such acts as 
their preliminary conditions ; so that, if we did not already know 
something of the orange by certain antecedent acts, we could 
never know the orange by these higher methods. This prelimi- 
nary knowledge remains to be considered, after these higher 
processes have been eliminated. 

What is the knowledge gained by these preliminary 
acts ? We answer at once, It is the knowledge which thcS^ameoi 
is necessarily involved in the use of the organs of ^ t S ion Se_per 
sense Let us try these organs upon the orange, one 
by one ', and first the sense of smell, suspending the action of 
every other. We perceive a grateful odor, and that is all we 
know by this means. Were we limited to the agency of smell, 
this is all the knowledge that the orange would ever give 
us. We open the ear, and the orange falls, or is struck. We 
hear the sound from the fall or the stroke, and this is all that 



9o THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §7 

we know by the ear. We taste the orange. At once two kinds 
of knowledge are given, as two senses awake to action — the senses 
of taste and of touch. Could we separate the touch from the 
taste, we should by taste perceive only the flavor of the orange. 

We grasp it with the hand, first lightly, so as only to be aware 
of its presence, then with greater force of pressure, so as to en- 
counter resistance. We pass the hand over the surface, and per- 
ceive that it is smooth or rough. We come to its limits ; for the 
hand is in contact with another something.- Through the hand 
we can perceive the object as impinging and resisting, as smooth 
or rough, as having extension and form. 

Last of all, we open the eye. A surface of color presents 
itself, separated from other shaded and colored surfaces by an en- 
circling ring. The color is shaded by the most delicate transi- 
tions, deepening here, almost vanishing there. As the orange is 
near or remote, the limiting or bounding circle widens or is con- 
tracted, and the colors are feeble or bright. The eye gives 
colored extension, form, contrasts, and relative size. Were we all 
eye, we should perceive nothing more. 

In connection with the use of these organs, we perceive or are 
aware of certain changing affections that attend upon the 
varying condition of the muscles which direct and move the sense- 
organs. We know the muscles as tense and as relaxed : we 
apprehend the affection that accompanies the grasp that is firm 
and that which is relaxed ; the sensation that attends the stretch- 
ing forth and the withdrawment of the hand. Certain vital and 
muscular affections are known in connection with the sense-per- 
ceptions. 

These various knowledges, or percepts, obtained by these 
several means, we combine into one separate and single object, 
occupying a limited portion of space. The process of percep- 
tion is not complete till we have attained the knowledge of single 
objects, made up by the mind of separate parts corresponding to 
the several senses, and having definite relations of form and 
magnitude. Such an object we call a material thing. When we 
have gained such a kuowledge of the object as enables us to 
recall and otherwise use it as a mental representation or image, 
wo have completed all that is essential to the process. 

Much of our knowledge of sense-objects is acquired indirectly 



§78. SENSE-PERCEPTION. 97 

We make the knowledge received by one sense a substitute for 

that which we might receive by another. Thus, by the color of 

the orange we know its taste ; by its appearance to the eye, its 

feeling to the hand — whether it is hard or soft, whether it is 

green or ripe. We know an object to be near, by the distinct* 

ness or sharpness of its outline and the vividness of its color c 

W^ know it is remote by the dimness of the line and the duiness 

of the color. We determine its distance by its size, and its size 

by its distance. Knowledge obtained by such processes is called 

acquired perception. The knowledge of sense objects under the 

relations of substance and qualities involves the application of 

still higher powers and relations. 

This general outline or preliminary analysis of 

& r . . -, i Results of ana- 

sense-perception has shown that it is dependent on lysis. Eight top- 

, . , . . 1 _ ics proposed. 

corporeal organs or instruments ; that it is attended 
by special sensations, each differing in quality and intensity ac- 
cording to the constitution and condition of its appropriate 
organ ; that in connection with each of these sensations we gain a 
positive knowledge of material objects; that we unite these 
knowledges, so as to gain and retain perceptions of separate 
material things, and that we gain this knowledge of things both 
by direct observation and indirect inference. It opens for us the 
following distinct topics of inquiry : 

I. The Conditions or Media of Sense-Perception. — II. The Pro- 
cess of Sense-Perception, in its two elements of Sensation and Per- 
ception. — III. The Classes of Sense- Perceptions. — IV. The Acquired 
Sense-Perceptions. — V. The Development and growth of Sense-Per- 
ception. — VI. The Products of Sense-Perception. — VII. Activity oj 
the Soul in Sense-Perception. — VIII. Theories of Sense-Perception, 

I. The conditions or media of sense-perception. 

§ 78. We perceive by means of certain bodily 
organs, and on the condition that these organs are emigrated?™ 
excited by their appropriate objects or stimuli, and dttfon! 18 * c ° n * 
that the nervous system with which these organs are 
connected, shares in this excitation. These conditions of sense- 
perception are purely physiological, and are discovered by the 
senses. Prominent among them is the existence of a material, 
nervous, and sensorial organism, 
5 



98 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 7$ 

The human body is material in its composition ; i. e., it con- 
sists of particles of matter which are endowed with the proper- 
ties, and subject to the laws which belong to matter in general, 
and which are united into bones, viscera, etc. It is also an or- 
ganism which differs from a machine, in that each of its separate 
portions performs certain functions, as digestion, secretion, circula- 
tion, respiration, each of which is peculiar, and appropriate to no 
other organ. This function is essential to the existence and action 
and to the performance of the special function of every other organ: 
while all must act together in order to further or render possible 
the special action of each. If digestion is weakened or arrested, 
the blood ceases to move and the lungs to expand, or both these 
functions are irregularly and imperfectly performed. Death 
may ensue, i. e., the once living organism, may be decomposed 
into particles of unorganized matter. 
m In this living organism is present a system of 

The nervous ,° «?,•».-, •,. 

system. The organs, consistmg of the brain, the ganglia, and the 
nerves. The nerves are filaments which terminate 
on every surface and at every extremity of the body, and pene- 
trate every portion, even the hardest bones. They are interlaced 
with one another, and their substance is occasionally expanded 
into large knots or masses. These expansions are called 
ganglia, and serve as independent centres of nervous activity 
and force. The nerves increase in size as they approach 
the ganglia, the spinal marrow, and the brain. By means of the 
ganglia and the spinal marrow, they are all connected with the 
brain, which is itself a larger ganglion, or system of ganglia. 
This system of nerves performs several distinct functions, and 
for each of these functions there is a distinct set of nerves. If 
the nerves are diseased, single organs fail, or the entire body 
perishes. If the spinal marrow is injured by disease or violence 
the limbs are wholly or in part disabled. If the brain is shocked 
by concussion, life is suspended or returns no more. 

The function of the nervous system with which we are specially 
concerned, relates to seusation. To fit the nerves for this func- 
tion, they are connected with various organs, the most noticeable 
of which are the eye, the ear, the nostril, and the hand. Thosg 
organs with the nerves attached as capable of the sentient func- 
tions when acting in a living organism, are known by the cot 



§ 78. SENSE-PERCEPTION. 99 

lective term, the sensorium, or sensory. The term is technical, 

and is appropriate to those organs and nerves, which bear sorm 

fart in the process of perception, and so far only as iheir functions 

are concerned in this process. 

We must notice another function of the nervous 

...... -i-i • The retle * 

system which is intimately connected with perception, action of the 

viz., their capacity for reflex action. The nervous fila- 
ments which proceed from the external and other organs run 
side by side in pairs, two being united within the same covering 
or sheath, and connected by interwoven fibres. If any part where 
they terminate is irritated, or excited in any way, one of these 
filaments conveys the notice to the brain or ganglion, and the 
other conveys the stimulus back to the place where the impression 
or sensation occurred. We say the sensation or impression, for 
it is by no mean3 essential that the soul should feel pleasure or 
pain, or in any way be aware of any object. Whatever the 
excitement may be, the companion nerve responds to the call 
of its associate, and contracts, convulses, or appropriately moves 
the muscle or the organ which is aroused. A message of invita- 
tion or warning flashes inward along one of these mysterious 
filaments, the afferent. An answer is sent at once outward by 
the efferent to the place from which it came, and the answer is 
obeyed. This may be done without the intervention or the 
knowledge of the soul. The nerves arranged for this special 
service of the senses and of motion are called the senso-motor, 
and the general action which we have described is called their 
reflex action. 

The nerves, it will be observed, are the subjects of diverse affec- 
tions or phenomena. First, they are subject to mechanical ac- 
tion and change. Like other filaments, they can be bruised, rent, 
or cut. Second, their constituent elements suffer chemical 
changes. Third, they minister to the healthy or unhealthy ac- 
tion of all the vital and sense-organs. Fourth, they are capable 
of various reflex actions, both occasional, in response to casual 
excitements, and regular, as when they sustain the involuntary 
action of the 7 ieart, lungs, and other organs. Fifth, the highest 
of all, when a sentient soul makes this organism living, they are 
capable of a special affection or excitement, which is the condition 
of sensation and sense-perception. 



100 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §79. 

The first and essential requisite to sense-perception is the exist 
ence of the sensorium as thus defined. 

§ 78 a. The second requisite to sense-perception is 
«ondition is an the existence and the presence of appropriate objects. 
object or exci- ^ e sav j n general, there must be visible objects in 
order to vision: audible objects in order to hearing: 
tangible objects in order to touch. In other language we say. 
objects, to be perceived, must be luminous, sonorous, resisting; 
or, more abstractly, there must be light, sound, and hardness, or 
there cannot be vision, hearing, or touch. 

One apparent exception to this principle occurs in the case of 
the so-called subjective sensations which are excited by stimu- 
lating the nerves by peculiar agents. Thus the optic nerve, 
under electrical applications, may be so excited as to occasion 
flashes of light. Sparks are perceived from a blow or contusion. 
Slight sensations of smell and of taste, also a ringing or whizzing 
in the ears, are occasioned by electrical action. Experiments of 
this kind prove that the sensation depends entirely on the excite- 
ment of a part of the sensory to a given species of activity, and 
that this excitement is idiopathic, or limited to the nerve or 
nerves concerned; e g., the optic nerve alone emits light; the 
acoustic nerve, sound, etc., etc. 

§ 79. The third condition of sense-perception is 
fl.«on. ,r it8°ac~ the action of the object upon the sensorium. In order 
Ben^rhim! to receive this action, the external organs must be in 
a normal condition — e.g., the eye, the ear, the 
palate, and the skin. If any lesion or disease occurs, the percep- 
tion is irregular or impossible. In like manner, if the nerves are 
diseased or destroyed, the perceptions are disturbed or prevented. 
Let the optic nerve be injured, and the vision is dimmed, clouded, 
or extinguished. So it is with hearing, with touch, with smell, 
and with taste. 

It may be asked, how do we know that these three requisites 
must be present? We reply, Only indirectly. We learn it by in- 
ference. If the sensorium no longer exists, there is no perception. 
If the object is withdrawn, as the luminous or sonorous matter, 
there can be no perception. If the organ or the nerve is destroyed, 
the soul does not perceive. We conclude that all these are its 
essential conditions. But that these conditions are not the acts 



§ 80. SENSE-PERCEPTION. 101 

themselves, will be still more manifest from the analysis of these 
acts. We proceed next to : 

II. The jyrocess of sense-perception. 

§ 80. The simplest form in which sense-perception The rocegs . 

is experienced is in its connection with a single organ sense-perccp 

L ' . i . . tlon in tue sir> 

of sense. The states or acts which we ordinarily piestform; 

J what is it ? 

call sense-perceptions, by which we apprehend the 
most familiar objects, as a table, a chair, a horse, or a dog, are 
made up of too many elements to allow us to discern the precise 
character of the elements or the steps of the process itself. It is 
only when we consider a single act, as of seeing and hearing, and 
of the simplest object, as a single color or sound, that we are in a 
condition to determine the essential nature and elements of the 
act itself. 

The most general assertion which we make is, that 
sense-perception is clearly and distinctively a psy- not physiology 
chical and not a physiological phenomenon. We are 
prepared, by our previous analysis, to distinguish perception from 
the organic instruments and conditions that are essential to it. 
Neither the eye nor the optic nerve, nor the image formed on the 
retina, nor the nervous response to the image — none of these, nor 
all of them together, constitute vision. The picture may be 
formed, the nerve may be stimulated to reflex activity, so as to 
contract the iris or let fall the eyelid, and yet there may be no 
sight. If a hot iron is applied to the flesh, and the soul does not 
feel and apprehend, there is no sense-perception. It may disor- 
ganize and destroy the flesh, consuming it to the bone, and yet, if 
the soul does not respond, the phenomenon which we seek for does 
not occur. In order to this, an energy must be aroused from the 
soul itself. Its presence and its nature are known by conscious- 
ness. Its physical conditions are observed by the senses and traced 
out by physiological analysis. The anatomist separates and fol- 
lows the one class of phenomena by his dissecting knife, interpret- 
ing the functions which he does not observe. Consciousness watches 
the ether, notes their similarities and differences, refers them to 
their agent and records their relations and laws. 

Let us. then, leave these physical or physiological 
conditions, and consult consciousness alone. We in- of two en- 
quire of consciousness, What is the psychical act or 



102 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 81. 

state? She replies, It is a process complex in its nature, but in* 
stantaneous in time. It is complex, because the soul, in its sin- 
gle act, distinguishes two objects — its own condition and 
some material reality : one of these is subjective, and hence is 
called a subject-object; the other is objective, and is denominated an 
object-object. One element is called sensation, or sensation proper; 
the other is called perception^ or perception proper. The one cf 
these is an element involving feeling ; the other is intellectual, 
being an act of knowledge. Each requires the other. Each is 
the attendant of the other. There can be no perception without 
sensation, nor can sensation occur without perception. 

But though these two elements coexist, it is with 
uneq e uli e m e en- unequal energy. The one activity is always at the 
same', and'the expense of the other. If sensation is intense, percep- 
tion is feeble. If perception is energetic and absorb- 



ing, sensation is weak and scarcely observed. The 
operation of this law is seen in the several senses, and in the dif- 
fering states or energies of single and separate senses. In vision, 
as compared with smell and hearing, perception prevails ; while in 
both the latter, sensation is in excess. In the perception of bright 
and stimulating color, as contrasted with the discernment of form 
and outlines, sensation is conspicuous in the one, and perception 
in the other. If we look at the unclouded sun at midday, we 
cannot perceive distinctly, by reason of the blinding and painful 
sensations ; if its disc is overcast, or a darkened glass is inter- 
posed, the perception is more distinct and easy, by the repression 
of the sensations. 

§ 81. Sensation proper, or the sensational element, 

Sensation pro- n . . _,. . , , 

per pertains to comes first in order. Ihis does not occur alone or 
apart. Pure sensation is simply an ideal or imagi- 
nary experience. Though sensation always occurs with perception^ 
it may be clearly distinguished from it. Sensation, thus consi- 
dered, is 

A subjective experience of the soul as animating an extended 
sensorium, usually more or less pleasurable or painful, and always 
occasioned by some excitement of the organism. This definition im- 
plies : — 

First of all, that sensation pertains properly to the soul, as con- 
tra-distinguished from material things or corporeal agents. The 



§ 82. SENSE-PERCEPTION. 103 

sensation of touch is not in the orange, the sensation of heat is 
not in the burning flame, but both are experienced by the sen- 
tient soul. The sensation of sweetness is not in the sugar, that 
of sourness is not in tne vinegar. There can be no music when 
orchestra and audience are both stone-deaf. As all sensations 
pertain to the soul which experiences them, they are properly 
said to be subjective. 

§ 82. Second, the sensations, though subjective in Ygt ^ erf 
the sense already defined, are yet experienced by the |™f* by *J t ° d 
soul as connected with a corporeal organism, and are withanorgan- 
directly distinguished in this from emotions proper, 
on the one hand, and from perceptions proper, on the other. The 
soul has a subjective experience of heat, hardness, sweetness, 
sourness, etc., but it has this experience as an agent connected 
with and animating an extended sensorium. The several sensa- 
tions, though like the purely spiritual emotions in being agreea- 
ble, or*the opposite, are unlike them in being felt by the soul as 
existing in a peculiar form of being and activity, viz., that of cor- 
poreal sensibility. That which feels is not the soul as pure spirit, 
but spirit animating an organism. 

It is but a part of the truth which Reid utters, when he says: 
" This sensation [of smell] can be nothing else than it is felt to 
be. Its very essence consists in being felt ; and when it is not 
felt, it is not. There is no difference between the sensation, and 
the feeling of it ; they are one and the same thing." " As to the 
sensations and feelings that are agreeable or disagreeable, they 
differ much, not only in degree, but in kind and dignity. Some 
belong to the animal part of our nature, and are common to us 
with the brutes ; others belong to the rational and moral part. 
The first are more properly called sensations, the last, feelings." 
[Essays, Intell. Powers, ii. c. 16.) 

Berkeley, Theory of Vision, says to the same effect: "The 
objects intromitted by sight would seem to him [a man born 
blind ], as indeed they are, no other than a new set of thoughts 
or sensations, each whereof is as near to him as the perceptions 
of pain and pleasure, or the most inward passions of the soul." 

Reid certainly would not say that the pain, or the painful sen- 
sation, which is occasioned by a burn, a cut, or a blow, is pre- 
cisely like the pain which is occasioned by the death of a friend, 



104 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 83. 

the loss of fortune, or the failure of a darling project. Both 
chese classes of states, when not felt, have no existence ; they 
both pertain to the soul, and to the soul only, as distinguished 
from the objects which occasion them. Both are alike subjective. 
Both are alike in being disagreeable, hence both are called pain- 
fui. But one is experienced by the soul as connected with an 
3rganism, while the other is felt in the soul without reference to 
the sensorium at all. 

Hamilton on the other hand asserts, "It may appear, not a paradox merely, 
but a contradiction, to say, that the organism is at once within and without the 
mind; is at once subjective and objective; is at once ego and non-ego. But so 
it is, and so we must admit it to be, unless, on the one hand, as materialists, we 
identify mind with matter, or, on the other, as idealists, we identify matter with 
mind. The organism, as animated, as sentient, is necessarily ours; and its 
affections are only felt as affections of the indivisible ego. In this respect, and 
to this extent, our organs are not external to ourselves. But our organism is 
not merely a sentient subject, it is at the same time an extended, figured, divisi- 
ble, in a word, a material, subject; and the same sensations which are reduced 
to unity in the indivisibility of consciousness are in the divisible organism 
recognized as plural and reciprocally external, and, therefore, as extended, 
figured, and divided. Such is the fact: but how the immaterial can be united 
with matter, how the unextended can apprehend extension, how the indivisible 
can measure the divided, — this is the mystery of mysteries to man." — Works of 
Reid, Note D* 18 and foot-note, p. 880 (Cf. 35, 38, 39). 

§ 83. It is implied, in what has been said, that all 
Scaiized^ 10118 sensa ti° ns are experienced with a more or less distinct 
and definite relation of place in the sensorium. This 
relation of place is at first very indefinitely apprehended; indeed, 
it may not be attended to at all ; but there must be furnished the 
means of discerning such a relation, provided the attention is di- 
rected to the sensation. It is impossible to believe that a pain in the 
teeth or a pain in the head should not be known as apart in place 
from a pain in the foot ; that a burn in the foot and a wound 
in the arm should not give directly to the mind the apprehension 
of a different place for each. 

When it is asserted that every sensation gives or might give a 
relation of place, it is not intended that the relations of place 
involved in and given by the direct experience of an original 
sensation are or could be apprehended so completely and so 
definitely, as they are by the aid of experience and the acquired 
perceptions ; but only that some knowledge, or the materials lor 
such knowledge, must be furnished in every original sensation. 



§ 86. 8ENSE-PERCEPTI0N. 105 

The different sensations differ in respect to the greater or less 
dehniteness of the part or place of the sensorium which is 
affected. Thus a sound or a smell is far less distinctly defined 
in any relations of place than a sight or a touch. But more 
of this in another place. 

§ 84. Fourth: The different sensations, as subject- 
ive experiences of the soul, differ greatly from one another^ 0113 
another in respect to quality and intensity; in other fiSite2ess! dde " 
words, they differ in kind and degree. Each of the 
leading classes of sensations differs from each of the other 
classes, as the sensations of sight from the sensations of touch. 
Under each of these broadly distinguished classes or kinds, 
jpecial sensations differ from one another ; as the different tastes, 
feelings, smells, colors, etc., etc. What are called the same 
sensations, differ also in energy, strength, or intensity ; as one 
shade of the same color, as red, is deeper or more intense than 
another shade ; one odor is more pungent than another. 

We come next to perception or perception proper. 

§ 85. This, as has already been explained, is no 
separate act or state of the soul ; it is only a separa- prolan °act 
ble or distinguishable element of a single complex Jedge™ kn ° w ~ 
act. Perception, as such, is, 

First : an act of knowledge and of knowledge only. The sensa- 
tional element is an element of feeling, attended, indeed, with 
the knowledge that the soul which feels animates an extended 
organism ; but in the perceptional act the soul knows, and only 
knows. 

§ 86. Second : This knowledge is objective — i. e., 
the soul not only knows the object to be, but it knows no^jSwhat 
it is not itself. What it knows is a non-e^o, a not- gndofanon- 
me, a not-self. But from what self, or ego, does it 
distinguish the object? or what kind of non-ego does the per- 
ceiving soul distinguish? Is it what is usually called a material 
object, distinguished from the organism or the body which the 
soul animates and moves ? or is it the organism itself which the 
soul distinguishes from itself; though it animates and moves it? 
It should be carefully kept in mind, that, as there are three non- 
egos — viz., the not body as distinguished from the body and soul 
united ; the body as distinguished from the soul ; and the sen so- 



106 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §88. 

rium as distinguished from the soul as pure spirit — so there are 
three egos, viz.: the soul as united with the body sensed and per- 
ceived, i. e., the living body as a whole ; the soul as animating or 
connecting with the sensorium ; and the soul as distinguishable 
from both sensorium and body. 

Our present inquiry is, Which of these objects is apprehended 
in perception proper? Which is known, or might be known, in 
connection with every sensation, or in every act of sense-percep- 
tion? We answer, The bodily organism itself, or rather that 
part of the sensorium which is excited to action. What the soul 
directly perceives — i. e., distinguishes from itself — is its own 
sensitive organism, so far as it is excited to sensation. This is 
that which it knows to be not itself, even though it knows that 
in sensation it is intimately connected with it. The immediate 
object of perception proper is the sensorium in some Jorm of 
excited action. (§ 98) 

It is not intended that, in the order of time, the infant does, m 
the earliest development of the reflective consciousness, apply 
the pronoun I to the soul as distinguished from the sensorium or 
the body. It is most evident that at first, and for a very long 
period often, this appellation is applied to the soul and the body 
as a complex whole, and this ego is distinguished from what is 
usually called a material thing. 

§ 87. Third: The object in perception proper is 

An extended - i i , . . , 

nm-6jo. not only known as a non-ego, but it is known as ex- 

tended. Even in sensation proper the soul knows 
itself as united with the extended sensorium ; much more when 
the soul, by an act of intelligence, distinguishes this sensorium 
from itself as a purely psychical agent, must it know that object 
to be extended which it as it were sets over against itself. We 
do not here ask what extension is, or how it is possible that the 
unextended spirit can know extended matter ; nor do we ask 
what are the relations of extension to space, either in the order 
of knowledge or of being. These questions are reserved for 
future discussion. We record only what the mind actually per- 
ceives, as attested by our experience of the act of perception. 

FercopHon nt- § 88, ^ e asl5 ' fourtn : In the exercise of which of 
tends -in the the senses does the mind distinguish this non-earoistic 

sensations. , .. ° ° 

and extended object — in the exercise of one or two, 



§ 89. SENSE-PERCEPTION. 107 

or of each and all f The views which we have proposed concern- 
ing sensation involve the necessary consequence that perception 
proper occurs in connection with each of the senses. If every 
sensation involves the apprehension of the extended sensorium 
with which the soul is connected, then it follows that it is possi- 
ble to perceive this sensorium, to whatever sensation it is excited, 
and that every sense gives the knowledge of an extended non- 
?go. Some of these senses do this with greater indefiniteness than 
others, it is true — as the sense of smell compared with the sense 
of touch, but all with equal reality ; if, indeed, it is true that no 
sensation can in fact occur without perception. 

Those psychologists who make sensation to be a purely spiri- 
tual or subjective experience of merely intensive quality, and make 
perception to be the apprehension of the cause of these so-called 
feelings, either limit perception to the sensations of touch and 
sight, excluding it from smell, taste, and hearing — as does Reid 
— or confine it to touch only, as Dugald Stewart and Dr. Thomas 
Brown. 

But while each and all of the senses alike give us 
an extended and external object, they do not give a^SlraaT- 
it with equal distinctness and clearness. As we have jecfa no^givao 
already observed, the senses of smell and hearing are clearness? 1 
far inferior in this respect to the senses of sight and 
touch ; and so far inferior, that they seem to many not to give it 
at all. The muscular sensations are also more conspicuously 
present in the movement and direction of certain organs than in 
the management and experience of others. 

§ 89. We pass, fifth: to the varying relation of The varying 
the sensational and perceptional element in different Nation and 
states of sense-perception. The general law is, that perception 

x x ° proper. 

Ihese elements vary inversely— i. e., as the smsatijn is 
stronger, the perception is weaker, and vice-versa. The operation 
of this law is illustrated in the different sensations of the same 
sense as compared with one another, and also in the different 
senses. 

Of different sensations of the same sense we ob- 
serve, vhat in some the attention is occupied more B ensatio^7S? 
with the sensation, while in others it is fixed upon the sense ame 
object which the sensation reveals. This is true of 



108 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 89 

tastes, smells, sounds, touches and sights. If any of these are very 
agreeable or disagreeable, the subjective pain or pleasure which 
they give, solicits and absorbs the soul's energy, almost or entirely 
to the exclusion of all apprehension of the organism, or of any 
thing external. If they are what we call indifferent or unex- 
citing, there is opportunity for the mind to attend to the rela- 
tions of diverse quality, of place, form, outline, which the parti- 
cular sense admits of. It has passed into a proverb, that certain 
sensations are absorbing, transporting, ravishing, enrapturing, 
and ecstatic ; all of which terms indicate the complete occupation 
of the soul's energy in subjective enjoyment, or, as the case may 
be, in pain or agony. We freely remark of others, that in 
them we are cool, unexcited, not carried away, self-controlled ; 
which epithets imply the possibility of any intellectual activity 
which may be required, the energy of simple perception being, 
of course, included. 

In vision, the apprehensions of color are more sen- 
rent senses 1 . e suous ; those of form and outline are more perceptional 
and intellectual. In gazing upon rich and gorgeous 
coloring, as of a splendid sunset, of autumn foliage, or a glowing 
painting, the enjoyment is more intense and the excitement is 
akin to pure emotion. In the apprehension and comparison of 
form, outline, and grouping, color is less conspicuous, the per- 
ceptional element predominates, and approaches the purely intel- 
lectual. But just in this proportion does the sensuous and 
passionate give way. 

In touch, if we take a burning or frosted implement, we are so 
occupied with the pain, that we do not notice its form, surface, 
weight, and many other peculiarities which a nicer handling 
would reveal, which delicate handling is rendered impossible by 
the absorption of the soul with its sensations. On the other 
Jband, the delicate intellectual touch, which apprehends minute 
constituents, slightly varying surfaces, gentle outlines, fine edges, 
etc., requires as an essential condition that the sensations be not 
at all obtrusive. He that passes his finger over the edge of a 
razor in order to judge of its fineness, must be careful that no 
painful sensations, as from a cut, or pleasant sensations as of 
titillation, disturb or distract the delicacy of his perceptive 
touch. In all these examples it is to be noticed, that so far a* 



§ 90. CLASSES OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 109 

we exercise sensation proper we are occupied with our subjective 
condition as pleasant or painful ; while in perception proper we 
apprehend an extended non-ego. 

The illustration of the varying energy of the sensational and 
perceptional elements in the different senses will be given in the 
following chapter. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CLASSES OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 

§ 90. The sense-perceptions may be divided into 
three leading classes : the muscular, the organic, and of 2ns&?e£ 
the special sense-perceptions. This division is in part muscular. The 
directed by the character of the sensations them- 
selves, and in part by their bodily conditions. 

The muscular sensations, or sense-perceptions, comprehend all 
those which arise from the varying conditions of the muscles, 
whether in action or at rest. The muscles constitute a very large 
portion of the substance or structure of the body. They also 
pervade or are closely connected with those parts and organs 
which are not muscular. The affections appropriately called 
muscular sense- perceptions are those which depend on the con- 
traction and relaxation of the muscular fibres, or the varying re- 
lative position of the muscles. As we slowly stretch or violently 
jerk out the arm or the finger, as we rotate the wrist, as we 
tread or kick with the foot, as we strain the whole body to lift a 
heavy weight or to push against a resisting obstacle, or as we 
exert a part or the whole of the body in manifold conceivable 
motions or efforts, we experience as great a variety of musculai 
sensations. Scarcely one of these is distinguished by a separate 
name; and the greater part of them escape common observation. 

They are ranked lowest in the scale of the sense-perceptions, 
because they are least definitely placed in the sensorium, because 
they cannot be distinctly recalled to the memory, and because 
they are usually the least positive in the pleasure and pain which 
they occasion. The^ serve most important uses, however, as we 
shall see, in enabling us so to direct and regulate the bodily 



110 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 92. 

motions as to distinguish the individual body from the rest of the 
material universe, and to defend it against serious or fatal in- 
juries. It is contended by many that we derive our first know- 
ledge of extended matter from the muscular sensations, as 
through their /arying movements the infant first explores every 
part of the organism within, and from the sensorium thus ex- 
plored derives the standard by which it measures the material, 
world without. (Cf. § 98.) 

§ 91. The organic sensations are those which de= 

The organic. Q 

pend on the healthful or diseased condition of the vital 
organs; such as the stomach, the lungs, the heart, the other 
viscera, and the nerves. When these organs are entirely healthy, 
and their functions are normally performed, they are attended 
with no very positive or distinctly noticed sensations. When 
they are injured or diseased, the sensations which attend these 
conditions are always unpleasant, often distressing, and invari- 
ably most readily distinguished and recognized. The healthy man 
does not know that he has a stomach. The dyspeptic scarcely 
knows that he has anything besides ; he is so absorbed by the 
uncomfortable or painful sensations that are occasioned by the 
diseased organ. The same is true of a man whose lungs, heart, or 
nerves are diseased. This class of sensations are more readily 
distinguished and recalled than the muscular, because they are 
more definite and positive. 

The organic sensations are often blended with the muscular, 
The vital organs are in part muscular, or intertwined with mus- 
cular fibre, as the heart, the stomach, etc. Their special affec- 
tions are therefore experienced in constant connection with 
normal or abnormal muscular sensations, and both are assigned 
to the same parts of the sentient organism. 

§ 92. The special sense-perceptions constitute the 
3eni e -percep- al remaining and the most important class. All these 
; are distinguished by this marked peculiarity, that 



its organ, con 

flitior 

objec 



3,,s > ar they are experienced through organs specially con. 



structed for the sole function of sense-perception. 

They are the so-called five senses : Smelly taste, hearing, touch, 
and sight. Each of these is clearly distinguished from every 
Dther, and to each of them is assigned its own organ or organs. 

The organ of smell is the nostrils, which open into the two 



§92. CLASSES OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. Ill 

nasal fossa*, the plates of which are overlaid by a mucous mem- 
brane called the pituitary membrane. The passages between 
these plates are somewhat tortuous, giving extent of surface foi 
the expanse of membrane, and the ramifications of the olfactory 
nerve. 

This organ is in immediate contiguity with the organs of taste, 
with which it acts in ready sympathy. Offensive smells occasion 
nausea and disinclination to food. Savory odors, on the other 
hand, stimulate the appetite. 

It is generally believed that smell is excited only by the con- 
tact of the interior surface of the organ with minute portions 
of matter, or gases diffused through the atmosphere. But what- 
ever uncertainty there may be in respect to the occasions of these 
sensations, with the sensations themselves we are all familiar 
Their varieties are almost endless. The odors from flowers, from 
food, from perfumes, from woods, from earths, from metals, and 
from many other objects, are too numerous to be classed or named 
except in a very general way. We class them in a few general 
and obvious groups, as quickening, refreshing, depressing, sicken- 
ing, aromatic, spicy, etc., etc. We name them usually from the 
objects which excite them, as the odor of the violet and the 
lilac, of the rose and the tuberose, of the peach and the apple, 
of cedar and camphor-wood. 

It is to be remembered that the so-called sensations are in 
truth sense-perceptions — i. e., they involve apprehended relations 
of externality and extension. The experience of every odor t 
according to the explanation already given, must be referred to 
some part of the sensorium. These sensations are, however, very 
undefined in their places and limits, and hence it has been sup- 
posed they are purely psychical. They cannot be distinctly 
recalled in the imagination or memory. Hence, in our actual 
perceptions of objects, they are referred directly to the object as 
seen or handled. That is, the object seen or touched occupies 
the attention and engrosses the memory, and not the object 
smelled. 

The language and terms taken from this sense are transferred 
to supersensual objects, especially to the moral and the religious. 
The odor of incense, the offense that is rank, and smells to hear 
ren, and the like, are examples of such an application. 



112 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 93, 

§ 93. The organs of taste are the tongue, the palate, 
and object1f aS and a portion of the pharynx. These are also truly, 
Jen r satk,ns. the though imperfectly, organs of touch ; but they are 
coated with a membrane which is organized in such 
a manner as to yield a variety of special sensations called 
tastes. The tasting organ, so far as it can be traced, consists of 
minute papillae, which cover the upper surface of the tongue and 
£he inner cavity of the mouth. 

Sapid substances to be prepared for tasting, must be made 
liquid. Those which are hard and compact, must be broken by 
mastication and dissolved in the saliva. The harder the sub- 
stance and the slower the process of dissolving, the longer does 
the taste continue. 

The sensations of taste are various in kind and almost count- 
less in number. They are capable of being so combined as to 
produce singular modifications and striking contrasts. They can 
thus, to some extent, be changed by custom and formed by art. 
Tastes that are at first positively disagreeable, become pleasant 
by being connected with a stimulant effect upon the nervous sys- 
tem — as the pungent and fiery taste of strong liquors, and the 
nauseating taste of tobacco. Or the sense-organ itself becomes 
less sensitive in its energy, and of course less offended by the sen- 
sations which were at first more intense, and therefore positively 
disagreeable. 

Tastes, like smells, are designated by a few general epithets, as 
pungent, bitter, sweet, spicy, acrid, sharp ; more precisely by the 
objects which occasion them, as the taste of pepper or alum, of 
the peach or the plum, of different vegetables and meats. Of 
this language or vocabulary of taste we may say in general, that 
it is taken originally from the sense of touch, as the obvious 
meaning of some of the terms, and the less obvious roots of others 
both indicate. The reason is obvious. The organ of taste is alsc 
an organ of touch. The tongue touches as well as tastes. Cer- 
tain tastes are attended with certain touches. 

It ought not to escape our notice in this connection, that the 
sense of the beautiful and the. sublime in nature, art, and litera- 
ture, and the capacity for judging rightly of its occasions or 
sources, is called taste in many languages ; a singular transfer of 
a term from one of the grossest of the animal capacities to one 



§ 94. CLASSES OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 113 

of the highest of the psychical endowments. It is explained by 
the fact that the corporeal sense of taste is susceptible of fine and 
delicate discriminations. 

The question is never mooted, whether the sensations of taste 
are purely subjective, or independent of all relations of exter- 
nality and extension. Taste, as a sensation, is inconceivable ex- 
cept as an affection of that part of the sensorium which pervades 
the surface of the tongue and palate. 

§ 94. The sense of hearing comes next in order. IIearing . it8 
Its organ is a complicated and convoluted bony tube ?2£;* an, *° b - 
or chamber, resembling somewhat the interior of a 
snail-shell, and furnished externally with an expanded append- 
age, the surface of which is corrugated very much after the man- 
ner of the bony passage within. The object of the external ear 
(which with the internal constitutes the organ), is to receive, con- 
vey, and quicken the vibratory action of the air till it reaches the 
tympanum. This is a parchment-like substance, which, by the 
aid of a chain of bones, bears upon a liquid within. The arrange- 
ment of this entire structure, when judged by mechanical prin- 
ciples, is obviously adapted and designed to carry and increase 
vibratory action. But the vibrating tympanum is not itself hear- 
ing. Though we seek for the spirit of sound in all these narrow 
and winding chambers, we cannot find it there ; but it flees from 
our search like a shadow or a mocking spirit. It is the soul 
which lives in the sensorium that hears. When the tympanum 
is made to vibrato with the requisite intensity and rapidity, 
and the nervous apparatus is unharmed, the soul, if attent, 
experiences the sense-perceptions which we call the sensations of 
sound. 

Every body which emits or conveys sound is susceptible of 
vibration. The sonorous body with which we are most familiar^ 
is the atmosphere, which, by being everywhere present, is the 
constant and the pervading medium of sound. Many solid 
bodies are, however, capable of more delicate vibrations, and 
hence are more perfect conductors of sound ; or perhaps they owe 
their effect on the sensorium in part to the vibrations which touch 
conveys through the bony structure. A stick of timber will con- 
vey to the ear in contact with it, a whisper or the scratch of a 
pin, scores or hundreds of feet. If the ear is brought into con* 



114 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 94. 



tact with a musical instrument, either directly or through the 
medium of some intervening substance, the intensity of the sound 
is greatly increased. 

Of these sensations there is a great variety. What 

The sensations . , . . 

various, in deserves especial notice is, that each one of this end- 

wnat respedts . ,.,,.. 

distingui&ha- less variety is readily distinguished from every other, 
and very many of them can be recalled and ro- 
cognized. A single human voice is capable of emitting a greas 
variety in respect to quality, tone, and pitch. The voice of each 
individual has its distinguishable characteristic in each of these 
particulars. The wind sighs and whistles and groans in the 
forest, or beats and rolls among the clouds like resoundiug 
waves. Almost every substance has a sound of its own when it 
strikes or falls upon another, and this sound can be varied in 
quantity and quality. 

Single sensations of sound are distinguished by quality, by in- 
tensity or loudness, and by volume or quantity. Besides these 
obvious differences, there are others less discernible to common 
apprehension, which are observed and named by elocutionists 
and musicians. The epithets which we commonly hear are such 
as low and high, feeble and loud, soft and harsh, smooth and 
rough — sweet, gentle, clear, piercing, light, heavy, etc., etc. All 
these epithets were originally appropriated to the other senses, 
especially to those of touch. Some few are derived from taste 
and sight. To a limited extent, sounds are named from the 
objects which excite them : as the bell and glass, like the 
wooden, the metallic, etc., etc. 

Besides these distinguishing differences in single 

Sounds in sue- . ° ° . ° 

cession t.nd sensations of sound, there are others which belong to 

combination. . . .. ... « j 

Melody and sounds when m succession and combination, bounds 
of almost any quality become pleasing when uttered 
in any regular succession ; especially when a series is made to 
repeat and to return upon itself, and its measures or intervals are 
marked by accent or beat. Examples of these are the beating 
of a drum to a tune, the rhythmical measure of well-sounding 
prose, or the more regular and marked repetitions of poetic 
verse. If the sounds possess musical quality, these repetitions 
constitute melody, giving exquisite sensuous pleasure to the ear, 
and, by expression, speaking movingly to the soul. To this is 



§94. CLASSES OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 115 

superadded the more refined attribute of harmony, when sounds 
of different musical quality are given in concord, greatly enlarg- 
ing, enriching, and elevating both the sensuous and expressional 
resources of music. Melody and harmony combined, when 
added to what culture has done for the voice, and art for the 
improvement of instruments, are the grounds of the elevated en- 
joyment that music affords. 
The sensations of sound are invested with even a 

. , . , , t t , ,»n t -. The condition 

nigner interest, and applied to a still more elevated of oral ian- 
use. Without the sense of hearing, vocal utterances pressiVe of 
do not become sounds ; and witliout vocal utterances 
as heard, there could be no language. As addressed to and af- 
fecting the senses, sounds are pleasing or displeasing, musical 
and melodious or the contrary, harmonious or discordant ; as 
significant of human thought and feeling, they are endowed with 
a wondrous and almost a sublime power. "When we listen to a 
foreign language of which we are ignorant, or when we cannot 
catch the sense of our mother-tongue, it is to our ears a jargon 
or a chatter, or, at best, but a pleasing now of insignificant 
sense-perceptions. But as soon as these sounds are understood, 
they become the audible expressions of thought, in its most 
subtle distinctions and its most complicated connections. 

Not only are sounds significant of thought ; they also express 
feeling. Even simple and inarticulate tones do this, especially 
f the tones are musical, or partake of musical quality. The 
whine of the beggar, the command of the master, and the threat 
of the enraged, are expressive as tones, even when no words are 
uttered, or when the uttered words fail to be understood. A 
plaintive or a triumphant strain of music is easily interpreted, 
though no thoughts are uttered in words. But when thought 
and feeling are both conveyed, the one by clear and well-chosen 
words, and the other by an expressive elocution, and the soul is 
enraptured and elevated by eloquent speecji, then the resources 
of sound and the importance of hearing begin to be appreciated^ 
When, again, poetry and music lend both grace and expression 
to thought and feeling, we have a still higher example of the 
dignity of a single sense, and the wondrous uses to which it 
may be applied in the service of the soul. 

In view of these relations, the sense of hearing has heeu 



116 THE HUMAN INTELLECT, § 95. 

ranked higher than any other. It effects a connection between 
one soul and another ; it enables the spirit to breathe out feelings 
which even articulate speech cannot utter. Its dignity and 
worth are especially illustrated in the case of the blind. It is to 
them the subtle interpreter of those emotions, which are ex- 
pressed to others by the eye, the countenance, the attitude, and the 
p-esture all combined. To the blind the voice softens in tender- 
ness, thrills with love, is harsh from anger, and lingers in entreaty. 
To them every tone breathes some shade of emotion. An intelligent 
and educated blind man once remarked with great energy, " The 
human voice is to me the divinest endowment of man." 

§ 95. The sense of touch comes next in order. The 

The sense of ° > ^ # 

louch. its organ of this sense is the skin. The skin is the ex- 
ternal covering of the body, and the lining of certain 
internal cavities, as the mouth. Its sensations depend on the 
action of certain minute papillce, which are placed beneath the 
external cuticle, each one of which encloses the termination 
of some nerve, or nervous branch or branchlet. Different 
portions of the skin are more or less sensitive, and the perceptions 
which are gained through them are more or less delicate, accord- 
ing to the number of the nerves and the fineness and frequency 
of the nervous terminations. The thickness or thinness of 
the external covering or cuticle is also an important circum- 
stance. In general, those portions of the body in which the 
perceptions are least acute and discriminating are the most 
scantily supplied with nerves, and their branches extend over a 
very large surface — in some cases over several square inches. 
In the more sensitive parts of the body, on the other hand, there 
are very many distinct nerves and nervous branches and 
branch lets. 

The distinguished physiologist, E. H.. Weber, was the first who 
instituted a series of careful experiments, in order definitely to 
ascertain the different degrees of sensitiveness in touch of differ- 
ent parts of the body. He applied for this purpose the points 
of a pair of dividers, which were separated more or less widely. 
He ascertained that in some parts of the body these points could 
not be perceived as separate, unless the dividers were opened as 
widely as three inches; while in others the extremities needed to 
be only the thirty-sixth of an inch apart in order to be distinctly 



§ 96. CLASSES OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 117 

perceived. Similar experiments have been made by other physi- 
ologists. The tip of the tongue, the lips, and the ends of the 
fingers, are the most sensitive and discriminating portions. The 
human hand, inasmuch as it is lined with a sensitive covering, 
and — through its connection with the arm and shoulder, and its 
division into thumb and fingers — is provided with an apparatus 
sspecially adapted to regulate and direct the application of touch 
and pressure, is preeminently the organ of touch. 

It is an essential condition of a sense-perception 
of touch, that the object should be actually applied dSo^oftouch* 
to or brought in contact with the organ — i. e., with 
some portion of the surface of the body. According as this 
application is made with greater or less force, the sensation varies 
in intensity and the perception in distinctness, and sometimes the 
quality of the sensation is changed. A light pressure or gentle 
touch, is usually favorable to distinct or delicate perception. 
If the pressure is increased, the sensation may become excessive 
and unpleasant, and even positively painful; while the per- 
ception is less acute, owing, probably, to the compression of the 
nerve or nerves. In some cases, the very slightest contact that 
is possible, with a careful avoidance of pressure, as in the touch 
of a feather, is attended with the greatest sensibility and the 
acutest discernment. But the force of the application of the 
organ to the object of touch depends usually on muscular effort. 
It scarcely ever can happen that muscular effort is not called 
into requisition, either in positive and direct pressure, as of the 
hand or finger, or in withholding from pressure beyond a certain 
degree, or in resisting pressure when it is imposed from without. 

§ 96. Hence it is that the muscular sensations 
always attend and often seem to be blended with the J* t fcfnl M1 
perceptions that are appropriate to touch. In the ac- touch^Vensa. 
quired or complex perceptions of touch, these muscu- Jo° u n c 8 h of gentl0 
lar sensations play a conspicuous part. In the classi- 
fications of common life and in those of the earlier philosophers, — 
both psychologists and physiologists, — the muscular sensations 
were assigned to the sense of touch. So were the sensations of 
temperature, many of which arise from contact with a body 
warmer or colder than the touching organ, and hence were 
referred to touch proper. Inasmuch as these various classes of 



118 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §96 

sensations are all concerned in many of the perceptions of touch, 
it is necessary to consider each apart. 

The first class are the sensations of gentle touch, or of touch 
proper. These sensations are occasioned more frequently by 
feeling an extended surface, but they may, and often do, arise 
from gentle contact with the extremity of a pointed body. Sen- 
sations thus arising are neither pleasurable nor painful, and one 
is scarcely distinguishable from another. Hence none of them 
can be readily reproduced in the memory. Pressure against a 
surface, or motion over it, each involving muscular sensations, 
seems to be required as the condition of sensations sufficiently 
positive and energetic to enable us to distinguish the objects 
themselves, and to recall to memory the sensations which they 
occasion. 

The second class are the acute and often painful 

Sensations in- , . v 

voivingvio- sensations that come from any affection that does 

lence or injury. i • i > • -i l 

violence to the organ, as the prick ot a pointed sub- 
stance, the cut of a knife, the stroke of a whip, the bruise from a 
stick. These sensations are all distinct and energetic, and occa- 
sion a shock to the nervous system which is more or less violent. 
They are more definitely localized than the sensations of touch 
proper, and more distinctly revived and recalled. The sensitiveness 
of the skin to affections of this kind is not proportioned to the 
sensitiveness of its touch. It has been proved by the experiments 
of Weber and others, that those parts of the surface of the body 
which are furnished with the fewest and the most sparsely ramified 
nerves and branches of nerves, and are the most incapable of 
sensations of touch proper, are none the less susceptible to exqui- 
site sensations of this sort. These sensations are not confined to 
the surface of the body, its interior portions being capable of ex- 
quisite suffering from pricking, cutting, and laceration. Sensa- 
tions of this class seem to be more nearly allied to those which 
we have called organic, and which are most conspicuous when 
an organ is injured or diseased. 

The third class are sensations of temperature. 
sensations of These arise usually from contact of the body with 

temperature. •> t 

some material object differing m temperature from 
itself. They are also experienced, by what is called radiation, 
from an object not in contact with the body. In such cases the 



§96. CLASSES OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 119 

body may be said to be in direct communication or contact with 
the heated atmosphere, or the vibrating medium of heat. The 
sensations of temperature are, in many particulars, like the pain- 
ful sensations which we have just described. They are like them 
in not being confined to the surface. In case of scalding from water 
or steam, or of a severe burn from fire, or of violent internal inflam- 
mation, or of febrile excitement, their causes are purely internal 
and the affections are organic. The sensitiveness of the body to 
heat and cold is not proportioned to its susceptibility to touch. 
The fourth class are the sensations of pressure or a 

. Sensations of 

weight. These, so far as they are definite and pecu- pressure and 
liar, are the slightly benumbed and painful feeling 
which a weight occasions when laid upon the hand or arm, when 
there is no muscular effort to sustain or resist the pressure. In 
such a case slight additions may be made to the bulk of the 
body imposed, without being perceived. If the same experiments 
are made upon the parts of the body which are more mobile — as 
upon the lips, when resistance and muscular effort is provoked 
and made necessary — minute differences will be perceived and 
appreciated. Accurate experiments of this kind were made by 
Weber, eliciting surprising results. Hence the so-called sensa- 
tions of weight are very largely complex in their nature, consisting 
largely of muscular sensations. 

The fifth class are the muscular sensations, which 
have been already sufficiently characterized. Not sensations! 11 a 
only do they enter very largely into the sensations of 
weight, but into all those sensations which require motion upon, 
and application to, the surface of the body which is touched. The 
sensations of the rough and smooth, of the adhesive and slippery, 
of the elastic and non-elastic, are of this character. According 
to the nicety with which these sensations are distinguished, is the 
delicacy of perception. Success in any manual art depends upon 
this sort of delicacy. Skill in sewing, engraving, and drawing, 
in the handling of tools, in driving, rowing, and playing on 
musical instruments, depends on the natural capacity for and the 
nice attention to these muscular sensations. They are equally, 
if not more important, to our judgments of form, size, distance, 
and the various relations of extension, as we shall see in consid- 
ering the acquired perceptions. 



120 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 97. 

One feature all these sensations share in common. 
eaiized. ons '" Though sufficiently alike to be classed together as 

tactual, muscular, etc., etc., yet they differ in quality 
according to the part of the body which is their seat. The 
tactual sensations on the palm are different from those on the 
back of the hand ; those on the hand are different from those on 
the different parts of the arm, and so on through every portion 
of the surface of the body. The same is true of the different 
muscular sensations. The muscular sensations which attend the 
opening and closing of one finger, differ from those which are 
experienced in opening and shutting tha hand. Those which we 
feel in managing the arm differ from those which are used in 
controlling the position of the head. The same is true of the 
other classes of sensations which are appropriate to the interior 
of the trunk or the vital organs. This fact is of great import- 
ance in the explanation of the acquired perceptions. 

§ 97. From considering the sensational element 
pct C o? toS " m touch, we pass to the perceptional. By percep- 
tion proper, in touch, as in the other senses, we ap- 
prehend objects as extended and external. To touch has been 
assigned especial superiority in these discriminations. Many 
limit them exclusively to touch, making it the only agent 
through which we perceive, and assigning to all the other senses 
the sensational function only. Others, as we have already said, 
limit perception proper to touch and sight. We have given our 
reasons for holding that through every sensation, and of course 
in connection with every one of the senses, we perceive—*, e., we 
apprehend objects as extended and external. The perceptions 
of touch, however, differ from those of the other senses not only 
in being more definite and minute, in consequence of the greater 
energy of the sensations, but also (with the exception of sight) 
in their immeasurably superior variety. For this reason they 
deserve special consideration. 

Let it be observed as a preliminary, that we do 
SvSbytoJch" not, by touch alone, know mathematical extension, 
by ' Xffion nor mathematical qualities, nor the relations of purt 
iSn. the ° rgan " mathematical quantities to one another, nor to the 

pure or abstract space or time which we conceive to 
exist. We simply perceive extended and external somethings* 






$' 97. CLASSES OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 121 

It is contended by many that the reason why we perceive ex- 
tension by touch, either exclusively, or in common with sight, is, 
that the organism itself is extended. We find, they say, that in 
those parts of the skin in which our perception of extension is 
the most definite and acute, the nerves and the nervous endings 
are most frequent ; while in those portions in which its dimen- 
sions are most vaguely perceived, these are more sparse. Hence 
it is concluded that two nervous terminations at least are re- 
quired for the apprehension of 'superficial extension. Moreover, 
it is urged that, as the remaining organs, txcept those of sight 
and touch, are each furnished with a single nerve only, or, at 
most, with a single pair, that is the sufficient reason why, by 
means of these, we have no perception of extension. In touch and 
sight, it is said, the soul being affected by sensations through nerves 
placed side by side, must necessarily perceive objects as extended. 
This view is held chiefly by physiologists, and, among them, by 
the distinguished John Muller, with whom many others agree. 

Of this theory we observe, that it overlooks entirely the dif- 
ferences between the physical conditions of perception and the 
act of perception. It may be, and probably is, a necessary con- 
dition to the perception of extension by touch and sight, that 
many nerves should terminate side by side or be spread over an 
extended expanse in the organs. But it is one thing for the 
nervous apparatus to occupy an extended organ, and entirely 
another for the mind, by means, or on occasion of the sensations 
which follow the excitement of these nerves, to perceive an ex-, 
tended object. The soul is not aware that it has nerves at all, or 
that one or more are called into action. Nor is it aware that 
separate parts of the skin, or other organs, are thus affected. It 
knows neither nerves nor extended organs as organs. The 
spatial arrangement of the nervous endings may be a physiologi- 
cal fact, but this fact does not in the least explain the apprehen- 
sion of extension as a psychical process. Moreover, this theory, 
and many others adopted by physiologists, involve the absurdity 
of making the soul first to know extension physiologically, in 
order to know extension psychologically — i. e., they require it to 
know the nerves as side by side, in order to know that very pro- 
perty which is essential to knowing one object as side by sidft 
with another. 



122 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 98. 

The correct analysis of the psychical process is that as the 
tactual and muscular and other more subjective sensations, are 
called into action, they are known to pertain to the soul, as con- 
nected with an extended sensorium. This sensorium is known 
to the soul not as a collection of nerve-endings or nerve-expan- 
sions, but as found in various conditions of activity, involving 
the soul's own active sympathy of either suffering or enjoyment. 
All these sensations involve some relation of extension and 
place, very vague at first, but sure to be more positive and de- 
finite as soon as the soul fixes its attention upon each. The soul, 
as it were, occupies and pervades the sensorium as extended in 
all directions. Its attention is first fixed upon certain of the 
sensations that are most positive or energetic, both the muscular 
and the tactual. Then the local diversities and likenesses are 
noticed, and the relations of place within and upon the surface 
of the body become fixed. Differences in direction, form, size, 
etc., are known, by processes which we shall explain under the 
acquired perceptions. But in order to any one of these dis- 
criminations it must be assumed that in the original perceptions 
of touch, extension, the sensorium as extended in three dimen- 
sions, is directly perceived. Unless such knowledge is gained 
directly in connection with touch, it cannot afterwards be ac- 
quired. But tangible objects are not only known as extended ; 
they are also known as external. This brings us to our next 
division : 

§ 98. Externality, or outness, is involved in the 
of ie externaiity extension which is known by the sensations of touch. 

Externality differs from* simple diversity, or differ- 
ence. Diversity may pertain to objects that are purely spiritual, 
as a series of mental activities or mental entities. 

But externality as apprehended in perception, as 
of W externa!!ty! has already been explained, is the diversity or dis- 

tinguishability of an extended object from the spirit 
as non-spatial and non-extended ; and again, it is the separate- 
ness or separableness of the surrounding material universe from 
the animated body. Both these relations are apprehended in 
sense-perception, and pre-eminently by the sense of touch. It is 
not only important, but essential, that these two meanings be nor 
confounded. 



§ 98. CLASSES OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 123 

It is also important to observe, that the externality which we 
perceive, is, like the extension, not abstract, but concrete; 
or, in more familiar terms, an external object, or an object as 
external. 

We will consider the two senses of externality in ExternaIity itt 
their order. As to the first, we ask, How does the * he firbt ^ nl " 

, ' fication. 

soul, in touch, perceive its own body to be external to 
itself? We answer, — as we have done already, (§ 86), — Precisely 
as through the other senses, by an immediate and inexpli- 
cable act of its own. It perceives directly its own body as a not= 
self or a non-ego ; originally its own sensorium excited to sensation. 
We open this question a second time in connection with the sense 
of touch, because it has been often urged that its sensations are 
peculiar in revealing outness, or externality. 

Some — as Reid — contend that the simple sense of resistance 
or hardness, or that affection of the sensorium which every solid 
body occasions, directly suggests outness. 

Dr. Thomas Brown teaches that all proper tactual sensations, 
like other sensations proper, are purely subjective and spiritual, 
without the suggestions of externality and extension, and that it 
is only through the muscular sensations that the knowledge of 
the non-ego is gained. " We open the hand or the arm, as we 
have done in a score of previous instances, without striking 
against an object. All that we experience is a succession 
of purely subjective affections — affections simply and solely 
spiritual. But we strike against a wall, or other resisting 
medium, and we ask, What has caused this new sensation ? AVe 
answer, it is not myself, for I have previously had, or rather pro- 
duced, only a succession of spiritual states, in a series of muscu- 
lar sensations. But here is a change. I have a sensation un= 
caused by myself, but caused by a being different from myself! 
There exists, therefore, a being not myself, and so I reach the 
non-ego, or externality." To this solution or explanation thera 
is this fatal objection, that allowing that the order of sensations 
has been previously the same, and that the order is for the first 
time changed by some resisting object, the change would consist 
simply in a new subjective experience. The resisting object 
rould give a novel sensation, but it would still be subjective. 
However unusual this may be, it is only subjective and psychi- 



124 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 99. 

cal, and, according to Brown's theory, can give no relation of 
extension, and therefore no relation of externality. Even if in 
the way supposed, a cause other than the agent could be reached- 
it might be purely spiritual, and not necessarily spatial. 

All these, and every other theory of the sort, have one common 
weakness — that they require us, by some arrangement or series 
or combination of sensations purely subjective, to account for or 
develop an objective, i. e., an external non-ego. But it is obvious 
that it is not the greater or less positiveness of a subjective sensa- 
tion, nor any change in the order of such sensations, which would 
elicit a non-ego, unless this were immediately discerned by the 
mind itself. 

But what ! it may be asked, when I grasp a pebble, 
aus\vend? n or an ivory ball, or a stick, is that which I perceive 
as external to myself simply the sensorium excited 
by the object grasped ? Is this the non-ego which I perceive, 
and this only ? We reply, that this is the only non-ego, which 
we reach by direct and original perception. The question is not 
what is in fact first noticed in the order of time, but what is first 
and ultimate in the analysis of thought. But do we not perceive 
also the object which produces these sensations? Do we not 
directly perceive the surface of the pebble, the ball, or the stick, 
as diverse from the sensorium, and the body which it pervades ? 
Not by immediate perception. If we did, it would involve the 
inference that we perceive a non-ego, viz., the surface of the 
pebble as touched, and producing a sensation, viz., the felt sensa- 
tion, which is also non-ego. That is, we should have immediate 
perception of two non-egos — the sensorium excited, and the object 
exciting it to a sensation. This is possible, but it must be shown 
to be necessary. We shall show in its place (§ 113), that exter- 
nality in the second sense — i. e., the distinction of the not-body 
from the body — is discerned not by an original, but by an acquired 
perception. If this is true, it is the result, not of a single act, 
but of a series of processes. 

§ 99. The sense of touch is the most positive of al) 

Sense of . _ . . 

touch the lead- the senses m the character ot its sensations. In 

many respects it is worthy to be called the leading 

sense. The sense-perceptions which it gives, and those which are 

called into action in connection with it, are felt on every part of 



§99. CLASSES OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 125 

the surface, and throughout the interior of the body and all its 
members. The sensations themselves are the most energetic of 
any that we experience. 

Moreover, the organ of every other sense is also an organ 
of touch, and, as such, is more or less sensitive. We touch the 
food which we taste, and unless we touch it, we cannot taste it» 
Though the eye does not literally touch , the undulating light— 
£ e., in response to the touch of light, gives no tactual sensa- 
tions — yet when the surface of the eye is pressed by the finger, 
or strikes against any solid object, it feels and is pained. It is 
also acutely sensitive at times as a touching organ. The inner 
surfaces of the nostril and of the ear, like the outer surface of 
the body, are susceptible of tactual sensations. All of these 
organs are more or less completely provided with a muscular 
apparatus, by which they are moved, directed, accommodated, 
and made more ready for and subservient to their appropriate 
sensations. Hence the tactual and muscular sensations are very 
intimately connected with seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting. 
In view of these considerations, it was said long ago by Demo- 
critus. that 'all the senses are modifications of the sense of 
touch.' 

In view of these facts, touch has been called, by some physiolo- 
gists, general sensibility, or the power of general sensibility ; and 
the four remaining senses have been called the special senses. 

It ought not to surprise us to learn that the sense 
of touch furnishes most of the terms for the intel- togSSEZ* 
lectual acts and states. Sight itself is indebted to 
touch for many of its terms. We take or apprehend a meaning ; 
we hold an opinion ; we comprehend or grasp a train of thought 
or a course of reasoning ; we accept a proposition. Especially 
does touch furnish the words for those acts of the intellect in 
which the feelings and the will have a share. The reason is 
obvious. We touch and handle objects in order familiarly to 
understand their properties and laws. The objects which we 
touch, and the ways we touch or handle them, are determined very 
largely by our feelings, whether of curiosity or indifference, of 
love or dislike, of caution or boldness. All these feelings are 
expressed through acts appropriate to the sense of touch, or by 
the modes of using its principal organs. Hence the spiritual 



126 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 100. 

acts or states generally, are expressed by terms and phrases 
primarily applied to this class of bodily activities. 

§ 100. The sense of sight is the last which we are 

Sight; its organ ... 

and the coudi- to consider. Tiie organ of vision is the eye. The 

tions of vision . . ,.-,".,. 

eye is in a structure like an optical instrument, and 
adapted to the refraction of light by a combination of lenses, 
and to the production, by this means, of a distinct miniature 
image of the objects seen upon the retina, i. e., the dark network 
of nerves which lines the inner chamber. This image can be seen 
in the eye of some animals if separated carefully from its socket, 
and divested of the sclerotic coating behind. The surface of the 
eye is small compared with that of the organ of touch, but it is 
susceptible of the readiest and most rapid motions, and of ad- 
justments of position and direction with little muscular effort, 
and as little muscular sensation as is sufficient for the discrimina- 
tion and regulation of its motions. This susceptibility of easy and 
swift motion and adjustment is one of its most remarkable physical 
features, and is the condition of its marvellous superiority. 

The conditions of distinct vision are a proper quantity of light, 
and the formation of a well-refracted image upon the retina. If 
the light is deficient or excessive in quantity or intensity, there 
can be no distinct vision. There is a particular distance for 
every eye, at which the most perfect vision of a near object can 
be attained. This distance varies considerably, from that of the 
so-called near-sighted, to that of the far-sighted. This variety 
is occasioned by a difference in the degree of the convexity in the 
lenses of the eyes of different persons, requiring a different distance 
of the object in order to bring the rays to a focus upon the retina. 
There is in every case, however, a certain range within which dis- 
tinct vision may be had by a more or less constrained adjustment 
of the retina and one or both lenses, through certain muscles 
provided for the purpose. The muscular sensations experienced 
by the adjustments of the eye in order to discern objects dis- 
tinctly, are important media in forming and applying the 
acquired perceptions. In order that the vision by both eyes may 
be single — and it must be single to be distinct — the two axes 
must be steadily fixed upon the same point ; and in order that 
they may be fixed, they must be inclined together. Tho muscu- 
lar .sensations, varying with the different adj ustments of the two 



§ 100, CLASSES OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS- 127 

axes are important in the acquired perceptions or judgments of 
vision. 

These conditions are completed or finished when 

t • • i • • i mi • i -i Function ot 

a distinct picture on the retina is formed. Tnis leads the image on 
us to consider the function of the image on the retina, 
or its relations to the act and the object of vision. Concerning 
this there is confusion and error of opinion. The mind can not 
see the image on the retina. If it could, it must see it by means 
of another image, and so on ad infinitum. Nor does it perceive 
the image by any direct act, knowing it to be an image on the 
retina. It does not know that there is a retina, till the anatomist 
or the optician brings this fact to its notice, nor does it know of 
nerves, or nerve endings, or nerve expansions, in the act of 
seeing, nor can it in any other way be aware of the image as an 
image. That its formation is essential to the act of vision, we 
know by physiological researches, but not in psychical ex- 
perience. Physiologically, we know that the one is necessary to 
the other. Psychically, we are not only not conscious of using 
it as a known means of the act of seeing, but we are conscious 
that we do not employ it as such an aid or means. If this fact 
were kept in mind, serious difficulties in the explanation of the 
process of vision would be set aside. For example, it has been 
often asked, How can we see objects upright, of which the 
images on the retina are inverted ? How can we see objects as- 
single, whose images are double? The answer to questions like 
these, and the difficulties which they involve, is, that the mind 
neither knows nor uses the image in the psychical act. It is by a 
purely physiological analysis that it subsequently discovers such an 
image as the last member or link in the series of physical conditions. 

The act of vision as a sense-perception includes two elements,, 
the sensational and the perceptional. 

The sensations proper from light and colors are Senga ti on8 
scarcely marked in our conscious experience as plea- i? P er of vi - 
surable or painful. Hence they are feebly obtrusive. 
They rarely if ever attract the attention except when they are 
painful through disease, or an excess of energy which induces 
abnormal action. Some colors, however, seem to give a positive 
gensuous pleasure, as rich violet or purple •. and a series of sucii 
polors, finely blended, occasions extreme satisfaction. So far na 



128 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 101. 

this is aesthetic, it is not sensuous at all. The pleasure from form 
and outline, as distinguished from color, is still less sensuous. 
These facts explain why it is that the sensations of vision are 
less definitely located in the sensorium, and why, when the eye 
is known as their subject, the percepts are so readily detached 
from the eye and projected before it. The equally unobtrusive 
character of the muscular sensations which are experienced in 
using the eye contributes to the same result. 

§ 101. Vision as perception proper apprehends il- 
P roper e ?n°Ti- luminated, shaded, and colored visibilia. When we 
jSofvision" ca ^ them objects, we do not intend that they are 

objects in the sense that they can be felt or 1 mdled, 
buc that they are illuminated and colored percepts, Set over 
against the soul by itself, and distinguished from itself by its 
own act of perception. The spectrum, as of a color refracted by 
the prism, or of a flame depicted on a screen, is a real object of 
vision. So is the image that seems to lurk behind a mirror, or 
to lie in the depth of a glassy pool. The colored network that is 
projected when the eyes are closed is an object. The visible percept 
is always colored. When we say it is colored, we include, under 
color, light and shade. Darkness even, is discerned by the eye 
only as the intensest and gravest of positive colors. 

This visual object is always extended. The 
tended. ays eX ~ colored percept is an extended object, and it cannot 

be apprehended as colored without being perceived 
as extended also. Brown {Lectures, 28, 9) insists most earnestly 
that the extension is not originally given in the sense-percep- 
tion of color, and that we connect the two only because of an 
oft-experienced and inveterate association from touch. Dugald 
Stewart (Elements) sanctions this view. James Mill, and all 
the associationalists, must of necessity adopt this solution. The 
following suppositions refute the doctrine : If two or more bands 
of color are beheld by the infant which has never exercised 
touch, it must see them both at once ; and, if it sees them both, 
it must see them as expanded or extended ; otherwise it could 
not see them at all, nor the lines of transition or separation be- 
tween them. Or if a disc of red were presented in the midst of, 
and surrounded by, a field of yellow or blue, or if a bright band 
©f red were painted so as to return as a circle upon itself on 



§ 101. CLASSES OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS 129 

a field of black, the band could not be traced by the eye without 
requiring that the eye should contemplate as an extended percept 
the included surface or disc of red. 

The object of vision is, however, an extended „ ... 

** VlSli'l0 6XtGH— 

superficies only. By vision only, a sphere is per- sion superficial 
ceived simply as a delicately-shaded circular disc. 
A cube is a flat surface with abruptly-shaded portions, bounded 
by converging lines. If we draw or paint from nature, we do it 
on a surface perfectly flat or even. In order to do this with 
truth, we must first see the object as without obtruding or 
receding portions. " The whole technical power of painting, 
says Ruskin, depends on our recovery of what may be called the 
innocence of the eye ; that is to say, of a sort of a childish per- 
ception of these flat stains of color merely as such, without con- 
sciousness of what they signify, as a blind man would see them 
if suddenly gifted with sight." (Elements of Drawing.*) 

Indeed, in some visible objects certain of these original aspects 
are apparent and obtrusive, and we cannot substitute the reality 
for the appearance. When, for example, we stand at the end of 
a long street, the lines of houses, or of trees, or posts, approach one 
another till they nearly meet in a point. But they do not con- 
verge in fact ; they are exactly parallel. 

It has been insisted by some that the eye perceives more than 
superficial extension — that we discern by vision, depth, or the 
third dimension ; that the eye, as it were, sees around a sphere, 
or along the receding sides of a cube. An appeal is confidently 
made to Wheatstone's discoveries in respect to binocular vision, 
and the application of the same in the stereoscope. The conclu- 
sion very far outruns the data from which it is derived. The 
objects seen through the stereoscope are not in relief, but are in 
a superficies or plane. No third dimension exists, but the usual 
signs of its presence are so striking, that the mind leaps for the 
instant to the conclusion that it is there in fact. The experiment 
of the stereoscope is so far from confirming the view that the 
third dimension is actually seen, that it shows most decisively 
that it cannot be, by effecting an illusion, which is well-nigh per- 
fect, by means of objects drawn and actually seen upon a plane. 

The question has been very frequently and very 

, ',. , „ TT . . ., , , , A single object 

earnestly discussed, Mow is it possible that the seen with two 
mind should apprehend but a single object by means 



130 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 101. 

of two eyes ?" The question has Keen variously answered by 
physiologists. Some have insisted that one eye only is in fact 
used in the act of vision, the office of the second being to 
strengthen or reinforce the nervous or physiological action of the 
first. Others teach that the mind beholds two objects in fact, 
but passes so readily from the one to the other, as in effect to ap- 
prehend only one. Others have sought to solve the problem by 
tracing the impressions made upon the corresponding parts of 
each retina, through the corresponding nerves of each, to a com- 
mon olending or meeting-place in the organism, where the two 
are fused into one. So far as these facts are purely physiologi- 
cal, if they are to throw any light on the psychical act or object, 
they must assume that the mind performs the act by a conscious 
recognition of the retina, or the nervous apparatus, which cannot 
be admitted as true. 

The psychical act is occupied with a visible object, which, 
as has been explained, is colored extension. It sometimes hap- 
pens that, in consequence of a diseased or abnormal condition of 
the eye or its nervous apparatus, the mind perceives two objects, 
when it ought to perceive but one. How is this to be explained, 
and what light does the fact shed upon the relation of vision 
with one eye, to vision with two ? We answer : In double vision 
the mind beholds two similar objects in two situations. In single 
vision two percepts are perceived in the same part of the field 
of view. They must necessarily coincide. If the one overlaps 
the other, the one must strengthen the other. 

The question also suggests itself, WJiere, in rela- 

Original place . * . ° . ' . . ' 

of the visible tion to the retina or the eye, is the visibJe object 
[i. e , the variously-colored plane or disc first appre- 
hended] placed in the original act of vision : is it in the retina 
itself, or in the front of the eye? or is it projected in space — say 
at the proper focal distance before the eye? The question, in all 
its forms, supposes a more extensive or a more matured knowledge 
of space, distance, and position than the mind can possess when it 
begins to see. 

Position, or place, as applied to perceived objects, is relative. 
It supposes some objects to be fixed as starting-points, and others 
as standards of measuring or estimating distance from them. 
None such can be definitely fixed and familiar before the not-body 



§ 102. CLASSES OP SENSE-PERCEPTIOXS. 131 

is distinguished from the body, and before the hand, the eye, and 
the parts of the external body have been fixed in their relative 
positions. The vague knowledge of extended matter which the 
sensorium gives must first be made definite by a bounding out- 
line; and the most familiar extra-organic objects must first be 
placed apart from one another, before the eye or the retina can 
be known as the instrument of vision, or either can be distin- 
guished as the place or the seat of the sense-percept. Long 
before these cognitions are attained, the sense-percept seen by the 
eye will have been carried by the hand into the space without 
the body, and irrecoverably connected with its correspondent 
touch-percepts, in the way hereafter to be described. 

§ 102. The superiority of the eye to the other 
senses is owing in part to the unobtrusive delicacy of Signify "of *hs 
its sensations. They do not occupy the attention and eye * 

detain it from the object itself and its relations. The force and 
tension of the soul's activity are given to these. Vision is capa- 
ble of far finer discriminations than touch. A hair of the 
diameter of .002 of an inch can be distinctly seen. 

The eye can also pass from one object to another with a swift- 
ness which none of the other organs can imitate. In so doing, 
it can place data at the service of ifche intellect as quickly 
as the intellect can use them, however rapid may be its move- 
ments. By its swift and wide-reaching motions it can imitate 
the slower and limited motions of the hand, drawing outlines, 
constructing figures, measuring distances, combining groups and 
elements, with surprising rapidity and precision. The cultivated 
eye sweeps across a landscape, and in an instant the mind 
computes the size and distance of its principal objects, and unites 
them together within a frame-work of mathematical relations. 
The minuteness of the observed distinctions, the vividness of the 
contrasts, the cheerfulness of the colors, the stimulus of the light, 
the sharpness of the outlines, enable the mind to hold fast its 
perceptions, to recall them vividly and at will, and to employ 
them for science, art, or practical life. The eye has always been 
estimated as the noblest of the senses; and many of the words 
which describe the actions of the pure intellect, as to see, to per- 
ceive, to discern, are taken apparently from this sense, though 
perhaps all are finally to be traced to the sense of touch. 



THE HUMiN INTELLECT. § 10& 



CHAPTER V. 



THS ACQUIRED SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 

§ 103. Thus far in our inquiries we have considered 
SSmT 1 each of tne senses singly. We have ^een that by 
£cqm ? ri and eacn °f tnese we S am peculiar knowledge. We per- 
ceive sights only by the eye, and sounds only by 
the ear. In connection with these diverse objects, we apprehend 
certain relations common to all, viz., externality and extension. 
In other words, by each of the organs we experience a determinate 
sensation, and apprehend an object that is both extended, and 
also distinguishable from the sentient and perceiving mind. 

But the range of our sense-perceptions is far wider than this 
We early learn to use one sense in place of another, or of several 
and to apply the knowledge which is given by one, in place 
of that which belongs to one or more of those which are unused. 
Thus, if I go into a darkened room and perceive a peculiar 
fragrance, I know and sf,y there is a rose or a tuberose in the 
apartment — though I can see or handle neither. If I hear a 
sound, I know it is from a piano, a guitar, or the human voice, 
and I know the direction from which it comes, and from how 
great a distance. If I look at an iron that is at glowing white 
heat, I say, It looks hot ; though heat is properly felt. 

The ttro classes of sense-perceptions thus characterized are the 
original and the acquired. They are thus defined . An original 
perception is one that is gained by a single sense, when exercised 
alone; of an object, or in respect to its relations. An acquired 
•perception is gained by using the knowledge given directly by one 
sense, as the sign or evidence of the knowledge which we might 
gain by another. 

The importance of the acquired perceptions la 

Importance x A \ * . 

and time of manifest from the greater frequency with which we 

gaining the 1 . ,. r , 1 • i -i • , 

acquired per- bring them into use, and the continence with which 

we rely on them, as well as from their greater cor* 

venience. Thus, a man strikes with a hammer upon the head of 



§104. THE ACQUIRED SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 133 

a barrel, and knows in an instant whether it is full or empty, 
without the trouble of opening it- A surgeon applies his ear to 
the breast of his patient, and determines whether the lungs or 
heart are diseased, where, and how far. ^.n architect, by a 
glance of the eye, sees whether the framing of a bridge or roof 
h safe ; or he measures off the dimensions of its parts by the eye 
as accurately as he could by his hand, or an instrument. 

The time when many of the acquired perceptions are gained^ 
Is very early. The most important, and those which are uni= 
versally applied, are made in infancy, at a period earlier than 
the memory can recall, and by processes which the memory can- 
not untwine, nor any subtle analysis easily resolve. Others, 
which are commenced in infancy, are perfected in youth and 
early manhood. Many are not complete till the senses through 
age begin to fail, and the attention becomes less energetic and 
agile. We begin the education of the senses in the earliest mo- 
ments of infancy. The artist, the mechanic, the musician, and 
the observer of nature, never finish it till the organs refuse to 
aid and to serve the observing mind. 

Many of these acquisitions are made so early, that they cannot 
be distinguished from the original teachings of nature. In very 
many, the process is performed so rapidly that it is difficult for 
us to believe that the mind goes through any process at all, the 
knowledge comes so simply and directly. 

It is more convenient to begin with those which have been 
made within our memory, of which the stages and the means are 
within our view and at our command. We may afterward ven- 
ture to unravel the more delicate tissues that have been wrought 
by the finer and more dexterous arts of infancy, in that early 
yet mysterious period when Heaven lies close about us, and 
seems to direct the movements of the soul. 

§ 104. The acquired perceptions of smell and cf 
hearing invite our first attention, because they can pS^Sns*oi 
be most readily explained. Our first examples are hearing. and 
of odors. We experience the sensations of smell, as 
from a lily or tuberose, from camphor or musk. We ascribe 
them to certain objects of given appearance and structure, with- 
out the use of ohe sight or the touch by which the appearance 
W structure is directly discerned. The ground of this confident 



134 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 105. 

knowledge is experience. There is no reason a priori, why the 
fragrance of the tuberose should not proceed from the lily, and 
the fragrance of the lily from the tuberose ; no known cause 
why camphor and -musk should not interchange their odors. 
We have simply learned by experience, that in all cases where 
/he sensation is experienced, a certain object is present. 

We do the same with sounds. We hear a sound, and believe 
$aat it comes from a bell. We hear another, and know it if 
from a drum ; another still, and say, There goes a cart, or a 
soach. Each of these sounds we ascribe to its appropriate object 
with positive certainty, on the ground of simple experience. 

We not only learn in this way the objects which occasion 
smells and sounds, but we learn the place and direction of both. 
This is especially true of sounds. We know whether a ringing 
bell is on our right, or on our left ; whether it is high, or low : 
whether a military band is far, or near ; whether it approaches 
or recedes. That knowledge of this kind is founded on experi- 
ence only, is obvious from the fact, that when the usual or the 
assumed conditions or occasions of our knowledge are changed, 
we are mistaken in respect to the place, direction, and distance 
of a sound, and that mistakes in respect to these lead to error in 
regard to the object which occasions it. The beating of our own 
hearts may be mistaken for a knocking at the door ; the tramp- 
ling of horses in a neighboring stable, and the cutting of wood 
in a neighboring cellar, may be thought to be within our own 
dwelling. The rattling of <i cart on a bridge may be mistaken 
for distant thunder ; the humming of a mosquito, for a distant 
cry of alarm, or the sound of a trumpet. 

§ 105. The acquired perceptions of sight are still 
C ept q ions e of Per " more numerous and interesting. These divide them- 

fX£bj«£- selves int0 several classes ' The fi rst of these are the 
judgments of distance by size. If we know the real 

magnitude of an object, we judge how far distant it is by means 

of its apparent magnitude. If we hold any familiar object, as 

a globe two feet in diameter, near the eye, and then remove it 

slowly, it will dwindle away first to an inconsiderable ball, and 

then to a mere speck. If we know its real size, we judge by its 

apparent magnitude how far it is actually removed. So true is 

this, that from a magnitr.de that is falsely assumed, we mistake 



§ 105. THE ACQUIRED SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 135 

as to the real distance, and are as confident and as prompt in om 
mistaken perception as though the data and the inference were 
both correct. 

Let a person look over the coping of a wall, or the ridge of an 
intervening building, and see only the spire of a miniature 
church — say of a bird-house — and believe it to be attached to a 
real church, and he will at once see it as a very distant spire. 

Second: We iudge of magnitude by the assumed 

. Judgments ot 

distance. When we have a correct impression of the magnitude by 
distance of objects, we perceive them in full size. 
We every day see men and other objects at long distances 
greatly diminished and dwarfed, and yet we do not perceive or 
judge them to be smaller than they really are. A lofty building 
viewed at a very great distance, or a tall ship far off at sea, will 
even seem loftier than when viewed from a position very near, 
from which the beholder looks upward, without distance and 
other aids by which to judge of their height. The most impress- 
ive judgments of the height of the loftiest mountains and edifices 
are gained by seeing them at a great distance over an intervening 
plain. 

Third: If the magnitude is unknown, or not con- 
sidered, we judge of distance by means of the intensity disumceTy 3 ° ! 
of the color, the sharpness of the outline, and the rela- deames^etc!' 
tive clearness or confusion of the distinguishable 
parts. For example, should we view, through a tube, severai 
trees of the same species, as the elm, the maple, or the oak, re- 
moved at different distances from one another, the nearest would 
be known by its brighter green, its more sharply defined outline^ 
and its more clearly distinguished leaves and branches. By 
these circumstances, designated technically as " atmosphere^ 
painters produce the effect of nearness or distance, with accesso- 
ries of relative magnitude and of more or fewer intervening 
objects. 

The traveler in Italy, especially when he goes directly from 
England, judges the mountains to be far nearer than they are in 
fact. The atmosphere is so much more transparent than that to 
which he is accustomed, as to reveal the outlines and face of the 
mountains so distinctly that he cannot believe them to be as 
distant as they are. 



1 36 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 105. 

Fourth: We judge also of the size of objects, by 
tize pother comparing them with other objects which are or seem 
^ects. 13tant ° b " to be at equal distance from ourselves. If the size 
or distance of our standard of comparison is incor- 
rectly taken, we misjudge altogether. Dr. Abercrombie (Intel- 
lectual Powers) tells us that, on going up Ludgate Hill toward 
the great door of St. Paul's which was open, he took several 
persons who were standing under the opening to be children, 
whom he found, on coming up to them, to be full-grown men. 
The reason was, that he assumed the height of the door to be 
less than it really was, and. by this false standard, he misjudged 
the size of the persons who stood under it. 

Fifth: Our judgments of distance vary according 

lutermediate as there are more or fewer intermediate objects. Ob- 
objects. . ill n i i -I • 

jects seen across the land seem .further than objects 
at the same distance seen across the water. A given expanse 
of the sea is greatly enlarged to the eye when a score or two of 
vessels are anchored at different distances along its surface. A 
level meadow or prairie, with copses, trees, and dwellings inter- 
spersed, seems far more extended than without them. A salt 
marsh, when dotted with haystacks, seems wider than at the 
season when they are removed. 

Sixth: Intermediate objects, by affecting our judgments of dis- 
tance, affect our judgments of size. The sun and moon appear larger 
when near the horizon than when toward the zenith. Through 
the influence of intervening objects and the dimming influence 
of the atmosphere, they are removed to a greater distance, and 
then judged to be larger. The sky itself, for this reason, is not 
the half of a sphere, but a section of which the height is shorter 
than half the base 

When the ordinary standards of judgment are withdrawn, r,nd 
3ur accustomed processes cannot be applied, we are either greatly 
embarrassed, and even bewildered, or we fall into serious and 
amusing errors. Captain Parry says : " We had frequent occa- 
sion, in our walks on shore, to remark the deception which takes 
place in estimating the distance and magnitude of objects over 
an unvaried surface of snow. It was not uncommon for us to 
direct our steps toward what we took to be a large mass of stone 
*t the distance of half a mile from us, but which we were able 



§ 106. THE ACQUIRED SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 137 

to take up in our hands after one minute's walk. This was more 
particularly the case when ascending the brow of the hill." 

§ 106. By means of sight we acquire perceptions 
appropriate to the touch. When we look at a sphere, form, etc., by 
we see by the eye only a circular disc on which the 
transitions of color or of light and shade blend so finely with one 
another, that we know if we grasp it with our hands we shall 
feel it to be spherical in form. A sphere may be so skilfully 
painted in fresco on a flat surface, that we actually take it to be 
a sphere in fact. We often seem to see projecting statues, gradu- 
ated mouldings, depressed panels, recediog corridors, vaulted 
domes ; and yet as we approach, we find only a plane surface. 

When the blind from birth are restored to sight, they come 
into a new world, of the percepts of which, and their relations to 
the percepts already familiar to their touch, they have had no 
previous knowledge. They must therefore go through a special 
discipline in order to connect the well known objects of touch 
with the newly acquired experiences of the eye. Thus the blind 
boy whose sight was restored by Cheselden could not call the cat 
and dog by their right names, or could not tell which was the 
cat and which was the dog. He could not avoid distinguishing 
them by the eye, but he had not learned to connect the dog and 
cat as handled — to the appropriate forms of which he had 
attached the names — with the dog and cat which he saw, so as to 
be able to feel them by means of his eyes. Finding himself one 
day at fault, he carefully felt of the cat with his hands, his eyes 
being shut, and set her down, exclaiming, " So, puss, I shall know 
you another time." The question has been often asked (c£ 
Locke, Essay, B. ii. c. ix. § 8), whether a blind man, on being 
restored to sight, would know a cube from a sphere. It is 
obvious that, so far as mere vision is concerned, he could not 
but distinguish the two objects as soon as he attended to them 
with the eye. What he would need to acquire would be the 
capacity readily to connect the visible with the tangible cube 
and sphere. 

In the examples which have been cited, we translate the per- 
ceptions given by sight into those which are derived from touch. 
The proposition is sometimes broadly and positively laid down r 



138 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 10& 

that from the touch is derived all perception whatever of form, 
distance, and magnitude ; inasmuch as in all cases, we must coma 
back to the touch as furnishing the ultimate standard. The 
position is sometimes stated thus : All visible extension must be 
reduced to that which is tangible. These propositions need to be 
somewhat qualified, if we hold that we can perceive superficia, 
extension by the sight. They are true to the letter of all those 
perceptions which involve the relation of depth, or the third 
dimension of space ; but to all judgments of superficial form 
and dimensions they cannot literally apply. To the blind, how- 
ever, touch furnishes the only possible standard of definite form, 
distance and size. 

The blind man applies his finger, his hand, or his arm, to 
every object which he encounters, and measures its size by any of 
these standards. But those who see, perceive objects extended 
superficially. Why, then, may they also not apply any of theae 
objects as units of measurement, and as standards by which to 
judge of form and size? We reply, they may, and would do so 
always, if what is called the apparent magnitude of the standard, 
and of the object to which it is applied, did not constantly 
change as the two are near or remote. A yard-stick or a foot- 
rule may be so far removed from the eye, as to measure to the 
eye no more than a foot or an inch respectively. Even though 
the standard is unaltered in its position, the object measured may, 
by being itself carried near or far, measure a foot, a yard, or a 
rod. We can only be satisfied that the standard and its objects 
coincide, when we bring the standard in actual contact with the 
object by the hand. But even then we use the eye, in order 
to be certain that the two coincide. The hand of the blind, 
however surprising may be its delicacy of touch, can never 
attain the fineness of the eye in discerning exact adjustments. 
Give the practiced eye an assurance that its distances are correctly 
taken, and it will measure and judge with marvellous accuracy. 
It is a circumstance which is worthy of attention, and certainly 
ought not in this connection to be overlooked, that the point of 
distance from the eye at which vision is usually most satisfac< 
tory, coincides with that at which the hand can most conve 
niently handle and hold an object. 



§ 107. THE ACQUIRED SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 139 

§ 107. It is by the acquired perceptions that we 
definitely assign the places of our sensations to the ^"p^s^oi 
different parts of the body. 2Rj£Z. 

All the sense-perceptions must be known to have jj*2? n the 
some place in the sensorium, though the limits of 
the place may not be definitely drawn, and the relative positions 
of each perception may not be exactly fixed. Whatever is in- 
volved in such a perception taken singly, is an original percep- 
tion. Whatever is added or superinduced by combining several 
perceptions, is acquired by experience. For example : an adult 
person has a pain in one of his teeth, he does not know which — 
or a cut in a part of his arm, he does not know exactly where. 
If he touches the tooth with his tongue, or if he discovers in a 
mirror which tooth is defective, he ascertains which is the one 
affected ; he learns as we say, where the pain is. 

That much of this knowledge is acquired, is evident from some 
cases of lesion in different parts of the body, and of the loss 
of a limb by amputation. A man who has no foot, will fee] 
pain in the foot. Why ? Because he experiences precisely the 
same sensations which he suffered when he had the foot, and 
knew it was the seat of the pain. But if he had never had a 
foot, he would never have assigned pain to it; for he would 
never have had the means by eye or hand or muscular sensations, 
of connecting these sense-perceptions with it. 

It is also by the acquired perceptions that we learn to regulate 
and control the movements of the body. Man was made to move. 
When the soul, so to speak, finds the body, it finds it in motion. 
Not only is this true, but the body is, by its very structure, 
adapted to certain specific motions, as of walking, speaking, and 
singing, all having definite relation either to its present or its 
future wants or enjoyments. These bodily capacities the soul 
acquires the power to use in definite ways for special ends. The 
motions to which nature prompts, the intellect learns to control 
and regulate, so as to bring to pass determinate results. A more 
particular consideration of this subject presents two separate 
questions : What does nature provide f and How does the intellect 
a/^ply these provisions of nature f 

We ask, first : What does nature provide t 



140 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §107. 

We have already adverted to the fact, that with 

The provisions J ' 

of nature for the sentient nerves which conditionate sensation, there 

these ends. 

are provided the reflex motor which impel to motion. 
In obedience to the stimulus furnished by the one, there is 
awakened in the other an unbidden and often an uncontrollable 
tendency to motion. Consciousness need not, and often does, not 
intervene. Thus, we wink in response to the stimulus of light ; 
the flesh quivers and withdraws itself from the knife; the 
muscles knit themselves into convulsions and cramps. Under 
the same law, the excitements being diverse, the heart beats, the 
lungs expand, and other involuntary motions are performed 
These functions and operations relate to the body, and their 
effects terminate in its well-being. 

There are other movements that are connatural and at first in- 
voluntary, which the intellect has the power to apprehend and 
the will to control. Such are the muscular efforts that are 
involved in speaking, singing, and walking, and in feats of skill 
or dexterity. Many of these relate to the soul as well as to the 
body, in the way of use or enjoyment. Some of them are made 
ready for the spirit against the time when it shall be sufficiently 
developed to apply them with intelligence and design. To all 
these movements the stimulant comes not from without, but from 
within. When the infant weeps from pain, and laughs and 
shouts from delight, it is under an excitement proceeding 
directly from the soul, that the muscles are moved to laughter 
and to tears. In the same way, every emotion seeks and finds 
expression by attitudes, looks, and gestures. 

In the same way man is prompted to speech : first to inarticu- 
late cries expressing emotion only, and then to articulate Ian 
guage and words significant of definite thought. Nature pro 
vides for all this, by making man capable of a limited raugr? 
of vocal sounds, through the action of those muscles that move 
the larynx ; and nature prompts to the use of these muscles in 
various ways, according to the varying excitements of feeling 
and thought. To very many, if not to all of these effects, the 
consentient action of many muscles is required. For this 
nature provides, by so arranging the structure of the nerves 
through which these consentient muscles are excited, that, under 
the stimulus of feeling: or thought, those needed, and those alone. 



§ 107. THE ACQUIRED SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 141 

shall be aroused to the united activities which conspire to the 
single effect which is required. 

Not only does nature provide for the conspiring action of sev- 
eral muscles to one effect, but she even arranges for and prompts 
to the combined action of different parts of the body in obedience 
to a single impulse. In order to make progress by walking, each 
leg must alternately advance and wait for the other. To these al- 
ternate motions there is an original impulse. These are movements 
which the infant makes long before it begins to walk. The arms, 
on the other hand, tend to move together. So do the fingers. It 
is difficult, and sometimes impossible, by any effort to bring 
certain of the fingers to a separate action. But it is in the eyes 
that this tendency to joint action is most conspicuous. The eyes 
will persistently move together in the same direction. They 
cannot be forced to act apart. One eye cannot by any violence 
be made to look upward while the other is directed downward. 
Nor will one tend to the right, and the other to the left. 

Even more than this is true. There seems to be, so to speak 
a natural aptitude for the joint action of organs that are not 
paired together, but which yet are fitted to aid one another in 
important uses. This is preeminently true of the eye and the 
hand. The eye must lead the hand, and the hand follow the 
eye, in a multitude of actions. When we would touch or grasp 
a small object at the first trial, the eye must guide. When we 
would strike it with a stick which we hold, or with a projectile, 
the eye must conspire with a fixed and earnest gaze. There 
must be some physiological reason for this concurrent action of 
nerves and muscles connected with two organs, though it has 
not yet been discovered. 

We ask, second : How does the intellect apply what nature pro- 
vides. 

The intellect finds itself furnished with this cor- 
poreal instrument, and actually using it under the tteSeiiect of 
promptings of nature ; it finds it laughing, or weep- JS s arranse ~ 
ing, speaking, and walking, under the promptings 
of nature, and it acquires the power of directing these activities 
in particular methods and to certain definite results, and of doing 
this so readily ? that it does not notice its own processes, or advert 
to the elements of which these processes consist. First, it 



142 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 107. 

observes the muscular sensations which are employed when 
certain effects occur, and the effects it observes by the appropri- 
ate sense-perceptions. It experiments upon these, and notices 
how the sensations which are connected with the varying use 
of its muscles are connected with varying effects. Then it 
tentatively and designedly repeats the effect which it has chanced 
to produce, or it seeks to imitate the effect which another has ac- 
complished ; e. g., to utter a sound, to refrain from laughter 01 
from weeping, to walk slowly or rapidly, or with a particular 
gait. By repetition of the effort, the effect is produced with 
little attention to the means, till at last the effect seems to occur 
without the use of these means at all. When the mind would 
accomplish an object, as utter a sound, hold a book, or let it fall, 
walk, run, or leap, it thinks only of the effect, and wills it, and 
it is accomplished. 

In learning the unfamiliar sounds or combinations 

How we learn . 

to talk and to oi a foreign language, we try one experiment after 
another, till at last we succeed. When the ear is 
satisfied that the result is reached, we repeat the muscular effort 
required, guided by the muscular sensations, till our com- 
mand over the organs is complete, and we can produce at will 
the sounds which we seek for. The infant pursues the same 
method in learning to talk. It is awakened from its purposeless 
lispings by the desire to produce a sound, as to pronounce a word, 
or a brief sentence. It succeeds imperfectly at first, but well 
enough to guide its efforts in the direction toward complete 
success. It triumphs at last, and it attentively observes the 
sensations which are connected with the word which it has 
learned to speak. Guided by these sensations, it can repeat the 
word or sentence a second time. 

The deaf-mute cannot learn to speak, not because he is mute 
by reason of any defect in the organs of speech, but because he 
is deaf, and cannot regulate these organs. He has the vocal appa- 
ratus in complete perfection and he can make all the varieties 
of vocal utterances which are required in speech, but not having 
the ear by which to direct his efforts, he can neither form his own 
efforts to definite results, nor can he retain the acquisitions which 
he has made. In a few cases, the deaf and dumb have been 
taught to articulate by a discipline specially directed to the 



§ 107. THE ACQUIRED SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 143 

management of the vocal apparatus; but the articulation b 
imperfect, and easily lost. 

The infant learns to walk as it learns to talk. It notices the 
sensations which attend those adjustments of the muscles which 
are necessary to quick or slow progress, to rising or sitting, to 
running or leaping. In all these effects we are usually guided 
by the eye. But sometimes we have not the eye to guide us. 
We ascend a flight of stairs to which we are accustomed, by a 
vague remembrance of the height and width of the steps. The 
blind depend on the direction of others, both in their first essays 
and in many of the subsequent uses which they make of their 
limbs. 

By similar processes, facility is acquired in those 
ferity. Ex- X uses of the limbs which are required in feats of dex- 
fects 8 . 10nal et terity, as in sleight of hand, or in playing on a musi- 
cal instrument. It is to be observed, however, that 
whatever movements nature fails to provide for, she gracefully 
accepts as a second or an acquired endowment. The effort to con- 
strain the organs or limbs to an unnatural position or adjustment, 
may at first be painful, and it may cost constant and severe 
application. But if it is persevered in, and especially if the 
intervals in which it is remitted are short, these new adjustments 
of the muscles are secured, and they even shape themselves to 
new forms. While the mind is renewing its efforts at brief inter- 
vals for a succcession of months or years, the substance of the 
body, in obedience to the laws of life, is continually changing ; 
and as it changes in its material, it is also changed in form, under 
the moulding pressure of psychical tension. 

In infancy and early childhood the merely physical capacity 
of receiving directions and impressions from within is incompara- 
bly more ready and quick than in later years. In early life, 
every single distinct effort in the use of any bodily organ seems 
to initiate a definite physical predisposition toward a permanent 
physical effect, either in the force or direction of the nervous 
stimulus, or in a new combination of muscles, or in fixing some 
form or attitude. A few repetitions, a brief perseverance, and 
the body is permanently moulded or fixed to the special service 
of the soul, in some new aptitude or habit. Hence it is that the 
bodily habits acquired in early life are so readily contracted and 



144 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 108. 

so in>eterately retained. But whether the law acts with greater 
or less efficiency at an early or a later period, the principle is the 
same. 

§ 108. What are called the errors of the senses lie 

The errors of ° m J 

the senses ex- wholly within the sphere of the acquired perceptions. 
A person needs only to fall into a few such mistakes 
to be convinced that they are mistakes of judgment only, and that 
as in the cases when he judges correctly, the process is a processs 
of judgment or induction. When a man sees, as he says, a bent 
stick in the water, he judges that it is bent by what he sees ; or, 
in other words, he judges by what he sees, that, if the stick is 
handled or otherwise tested by the sense of touch, it will be 
found to be crooked. And yet he seems to perceive by the eye 
that it is bent. So, when he looks into a kaleidoscope, and sees 
scores of brilliant objects arranged in symmetrical groups, he 
perceives them all by the eye, and can count their number, and 
does not doubt that he can grasp them all by the hand. It is 
common in such cases for a person to say that his senses deceive 
him. But the senses are not treacherous : they cannot deceive. 
It is the man who is deceived in the judgments which he pro- 
nounces on the evidence which the senses furnish. He is simply 
hasty and premature in judging by the eye. He rashly connects, 
with what he sees by the eye, something which he believes with 
his mind. The bent stick is perceived when out of the water 
just as is a bent stick in the water; in either case a judgment is 
pronounced — in the one case a judgment which is right, in the 
other a judgment which is wrong. 

The muscular sensations of the fingers may also be disturbed. 
We cross the fingers, and at the points of both a single pea is 
felt as two. The reason is that the convex surfaces, which as 
they are usually touched are interpreted as looking inward form- 
ing a single sphere, seem to look outward, and by the imagina- 
tion are interpreted as requiring two to complete them. 

This class of the so-called errors and deceptions of the senses 
ought to be sharply distinguished from another, which is caused 
by the physical conditions of the sensations themselves. Some men, 
for example, are color-blind — ?'. e., they see every object in one 
uniform, dingy hue, instead of under the bright and diversified 
colors which are granted to the majority of men. Some men. 



§ 109. THE ACQUIRED SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 145 

through a disease of the stomach or liver, see every object tinged 
with yellow. It occasionally happens that a man is afflicted with 
double vloion — seeing two objects where other men see only one. 
Others see spectra, or visible images which have no tangible 
reality, and no reality at all except to the individual who 
beholds them. Others hear sounds, as of ringing in the ears, 
when there is no sonorous body, and no vibration of the atmos- 
phere. Cases of this kind are never deceptions of the senses, 
for the objects perceived are the natural and legitimate product 
of the physical conditions that are present; these conditions 
being the physical excitants or stimuli and the sensorium excited, 
whether to normal or abnormal activity. 

§ 109. The acquired perceptions differ from the 
original as forms of knowledge. Acts of original per- perc^tSn-TL 
ception are acts of direct or immediate knowledge. ied?|.° u ° w " 
In such acts the objects are present to the intellect, 
and the intellect knows directly that they are, and that they 
exist in certain relations. Acts of acquired perception are acts 
of mediate knowledge. In such acts it is by the medium of 
another act of original perception, that the object is said to be 
perceived. Thus, when I know the place of an object, the size 
or distance of an object seen, I use a direct or immediate percep- 
tion as the medium through which I reach what I know indirectly. 

Again : an act of acquired perception requires for its fulfilment 
the representative power , in the form of phantasy or memory. When 
the mind, on occasion of a direct perception, supplies that which 
it does not directly feel, or see, or measure, it must reproduce 
its object from something previously experienced, either in the 
form of a perception precisely like what is reproduced, or else 
similar or analogous. But the original perception apprehends its 
object directly. 

Again : if the act of acquired perception rests upon the repre« 
senting power or agency, it must involve the action of the asso- 
ciative power. At the experience cf one odor, we think of a 
lily; at the experience of another, of a tuberose. At the 
sight of a distant moving object, no larger than a mote, we 
thiuk of a man or a horse. What brings the form of a rose or 
a tuberose, the picture of a man or a horse, before my mind's eye 
on occasion of these direct perceptions? We must anticipate 
7 



146 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 109 

our knowledge of the laws which govern the representative 
power, in order to answer — The laws of association. 

Every act of acquired perception is an act of in- 
induction7° ve duction. The mind does more than represent some 
picture or remembrance out of the stores of its past 
experience; it believes there is a real object corresponding to this 
picture. In so doing, it perforins a process of induction. It 
judges, by the signs or indications which the original perceptions 
furnish, that there are existing objects which the other senses 
would find to exist should they make the trial. The process by 
which this belief is attained is variously named inference, induc- 
tion, judgment, interpretation, etc. It is peculiar in this, that it 
knows by media or signs. It also assumes that these signs 
always indicate the same accompaniments, and that the laws and 
operations of nature are uniform in respect to the connections 
which are indicated. 

It may surprise many to learn that the processes employed in 
the acquired perceptions are processes of induction. Induction 
is usually conceived and described as a process which is appro- 
priated to philosophical discovery, which requires wide generali- 
zation and profound reflection, and issues only in comprehensive 
principles and laws. A little reflection will satisfy any one, 
however, that the act of mind is the same with that performed 
in every one of the acquired perceptions. The difference between 
the two kinds of induction is not in the process, but in the 
materials upon which the mind performs them. But the acts, 
the fundamental assumptions, and the liabilities to error in both ; 
are essentially the same. 

But it cannot be possible, it will be urged, that the perceptions 
which the infant so rapidly acquires, and which the most igno- 
rant and unreflecting so skilfully apply, are in their nature 
similar to those profound and daring acts by which the astrono- 
mer scales the heavens, and the naturalist penetrates and resolves 
the mysteries of the universe. The difficulties and objections 
which are expressed in this language can be most effectually set 
aside, if we notice the differences in the circumstances and con- 
ditions of the acts performed by the infant and the philosopher. 

We notice 1 . that the infant employs its perceptions upon a 
very limited number of objects. 



§ 109. THE ACQUIRED SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 147 

2. The few objects which the infant mind distinguishes are 
constantly recurring to view. 

3. All the objects and parts of objects with which the infant 
has to do — in other words, all its sense-perceptions — have an 
immediate relation to its appetites and desires. 

4. When any experiment has been successfully made in the 
way of connecting the known and the untried, the gratification 
at success will stimulate to repetition: and this again holds the 
attention to every element and step in the process, till the whole 
is fixed in the memory. The infant repeats all its lessons as fast 
as it learns them, because it rejoices over its acquisitions. 

5. The associating power unites what observation notices. So 
few are the combinations which it has made as yet, and so closely 
were they connected by the original acts which first bound them 
together, that the one cannot be perceived or thought of without 
its companion. 

6. The resemblances which the infant apprehends are few, and 
discerned with little effort. It might better be said that similar 
objects are at first recognized as the same, rather than discerned 
as similar. Hence the inductions of the infant are at first simple 
acts of spontaneous memory, rather than beliefs founded on 
similar instances. 

In induction proper, the similarities are remote — not obvious, 
not directly discerned, but indirectly surmised ; the data them- 
selves are the results of previous research and reflection, instead 
of being forced upon the attention. 

7. The infant cares for the result, and, in its eagerness to reach 
it, slights or disregards the meaus. What it finds to be true, 
occupies its attention, and not the evidence or data by which it 
has discovered it. 

8. The freshness and energy of the activity of the human soul 
in the earliest periods of its life continually surprise and astonish 
us. The activity of the intellect, the freshness of interest, the 
energy of will, the eagerness of the desires, the variety of the 
experiments upon itself, upon nature, and man, are ceaseless occa- 
sions of interest and surprise to older persons whose powers are 
torpid or overwrought, and whose curiosity is partially sated. 

Whatever objections may be urged against the possibility that 
acquisitions like these should be made in infancy and early life, 



148 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 109. 

are satisfactorily met by the unquestioned fact, that the infant is 
constantly making experiments and falling into errors in this 
very sphere of induction and acquired knowledge. It makes 
awkward attempts to grasp, to reach, to stand ; and to walk ; it 
misjudges in respect to the distance, form, size, and nature of 
the objects beyond its reach ; it is taught by experience, and it 
applies the lessons which experience imparts, whether painful or 
pleasant. It is never so busy as in the earliest years of its life, 
All this time it is chiefly occupied with experiments upon the 
material world and its own bodily powers, its energy being 
employed in the very directions, and being busied with the very 
objects, with which the acquired perceptions are concerned. 

It ought also to be remembered that, during the same period, 
it makes the surprising acquisition of language ; always of the 
mother-tongue, and, if circumstances favor, of one or two lan- 
guages more. To acquire a new language so as to speak it well, 
costs an adult whose powers are well disciplined many months, 
if not years of labor. With how much greater ease, rapidity, 
and perfection, is the same task achieved by the infant! Surely 
it is not surprising that at an age as early, or even earlier, it 
should master the acquired perceptions. 
rtl . . „ It might be urged in objection still further, that 

Objections from . . 

the cases of ani- there is no evidence that animals have what are 

mals. 

properly acquired perceptions. On the contrary, 
observation shows decisively that they perceive directly the dis- 
tance, size, and properties of the objects with which they are 
concerned. The chicken, with the young of certain birds, strikes 
its beak with precision and success at the food brought within its 
reach, even before it is released from the shell. The young of 
the partridge and the grouse run swiftly through the stubble, 
avoiding projecting objects as if with practiced skill. The young 
of quadrupeds run and leap with little previous discipline or train- 
ing. In view of these facts, it is confidently urged that, if 
these animals are taught by instinct to perceive correctly, it is 
not to be supposed that man would be left to the slow and 
uncertain processes of feeling his way along to certain beliefs. 
Surely nature would do as much for its noblest work, as for the 
inferior species. 

To this objection is to be opposed the indisputable fact that 



§109. THE ACQUIRED SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 149 

the human species is slowly disciplined to feel its way on to 
matured and trustworthy acquisitions. The reason why, is ob- 
vious. The animal has not the capacity to judge by signs, to 
that extent and with that discrimination which would qualify it to 
build up the power of perception. This deficiency is supplemented 
by instinct, about which we know but little, but enough to be cer- 
tain that it effects by blind and unintelligent impulse what reason 
discerns and performs with discriminating judgment. 

Some facts are observed in infants which are supposed to be 
inconsistent with these conclusions, and to prove decisively that 
the infant, as well as the animal, has a so-called instinctive per- 
ception of distance. Thus, for example, Adam Smith reasons: 
"A child that is scarcely a month old, stretches out its hands to 
feel any little plaything that is presented toward it." It is more 
than possible that in infancy the eye cannot be excited by a 
visible object, especially if the object gives pleasure, without a 
consentient movement of the hands, and of both hands and eyes, 
in the same direction. That some provision should be made for 
such a conspiring movement or impulse to motion of two 
members of the body that perform many functions in common, 
may be received as probable, and believed to be true. But this 
would not prove that the eye, in the proper sense of the term, 
discerns distance. All the movements with both hand and eye 
show that this is judged or inferred by indications or signs. 

Important reasons suggest themselves, however, 

it • • ii ' • Reasons why 

why the animal is taught and impelled by instinct to the perceptions 

.. . of animals and 

do at once, and with little exposure to failure, what of man should 
man can only attain by slow and painful acquisition, 
and at the risk of many failures and sufferings. The discipline 
to which man is subjected has respect to his moral culture as 
well as to his intellectual discipline. He needs to learn patience, 
caution, foresight, and circumspection, as well as the highei 
virtues. All 01 these are furthered by the disciplinary processes 
through which he gains the acquired perceptions. It is by the 
adaptation of this discipline to high moral uses, that we explain 
the law of nature by which man is born the most ignorant and 
helpless of all the animals, and forced, as it were, to make his 
acquisitions by his own sagacity, as fast as he is impelled by his 
awakened appetites, desires, and affections. 



150 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 110. 

We conclude, then, that the processes of the acquired percep- 
tions are processes of induction, and that they involve the powers 
of representation, and judgment by indications. In other words, 
in the very act of perception, usually considered as the lowest 
and the most elementary of all the acts of the intellect, there is 
required the presence of the higher powers with the intuitions 
and relations which they involve. This is a striking instance 
of the principle already enounced, that no faculty of the intellect 
can act apart from the rest. For we have found that, in the 
very lowest of all, the rudimentary action of the very highest 
must be present, in order that its perceptions may be human 
and rational. 



CHAPTER VI. 



DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 

§ 110. We propose next to trace the growth and 
fst^n/drtfil development of the sense-perceptions in earliest in- 
prowem. the fancy. We take our guidance from what w T e have 
observed of those processes which we are certain that 
we acquire, and, going back to that period of which memory 
brings no report, we ask, From what beginnings, in w T hat order, 
and by what steps does the infant mind develop and mature the 
power of sense-perception of which it finds itself in possession 
when it awakes to distinct and remembered consciousness? 

The question is full of interest. It seems like a proposal to 
revive the experience of our earliest years, and restore, as it were, 
the forgotten past of our lives. There is a mystery about those 
months and" years which we would fain unravel, while the diffi- 
culty and apparent insuperableness of the problem incite and 
challenge us to the effort. 

The difficulty which attends the effort arises from the fact that 
it is impossible, by memory, to bring back a single fragment 
of our infant life. We cannot penetrate the darkness and 
obscurity which overhang the whole of this period of our existence 



vj 110. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OP SENSE-PERCEPTION. 151 

We can not recall to the memory any single perception in 
which all visible objects were depicted on an extended plane, 
without distance or depth. Nor can we by imagination feign 
such an experience. The effort to do either must be fruitless. 
The new elements which we have incorporated into our constant 
habitudes of perception and knowledge we can never throw off. 
We can not lay off the new growth which has overgrown the 
original germ. But the problem, though difficult, is not insolva- 
ble. To the judgment only is it explicable, but not to the imagi- 
nation. We can demonstrate what our infant life must have been, 
but we cannot imagine how this infant life must have seemed. 

To attempt to retrace and thus to reconstruct the processes 
of the earliest perceptions of childhood, is not irrational. We 
have at our command the materials with which to prosecute our 
analysis and to construct our synthesis. These are the known 
facts of experience and observation within our conscious experi- 
ence, the facts observed of infants and very young children, and 
the probable conclusions which analogy warrants us in deriving 
from both. 

Who can tell what a baby thinks ? 
Who can follow the gossamer links 

By which the manikin feels hia way 
Out from the shore of the great unknown. 
Blind, and wailing, and alone, 

Into the light of day ? 
* * • * * 

What does he think of his mother's eyes? 

What does he think of his moMier's hair? 
What of the cradle-roof, that flics 

Forward and backward through the air? etc. 
J. O. Holland. — Bitter- Sweet. 

All that we observe of the actions of infants and young 
children is entirely consistent with the theory, that they develop 
the power of perception by many experiments and many mis- 
takes. 

The known methods and laws of nature in the education of 
men and of animals give the strongest confirmation to these con- 
clusions. We rely with confidence upon the view that, so far as 
it is possible to account for the acquired perceptions by the 



152 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 1 11. 

theory of intelligent activity rather than by that of blind instinct, 
so far we are bound to go. Where intelligent activity cannot be 
presumed or proved, there instinct and intuition must be 
assumed. 

Synthesis or combination, however, cannot account for every 
process or solve every problem. There must be original elements 
with which to begin, or else there would be nothing with which 
to combine, or which could be added when it was sought for. 
There must be capacities or powers of original knowledge, 
beyond or behind which we cannot go in our analysis ; which 
capacities, indeed, give the elements which we evolve by 
such analysis. 

§ 111. These things being premised, we observe: 

The condition ° . i - i i 

of the intei- The first condition in which the soul exists before the 

lect before . . ... , 

sense-percep- beginnings of conscious activity, is nearly allied to the 
state of sleep undisturbed by dreams, or of a dead 
fainting, in which the most indistinct and feeblest sensations 
possible are experienced without distinct perception. The unde- 
veloped condition of man is not dreamlike in the sense of being 
confused, or bewildered ; it is rather such a vague and low condi- 
tion of sense-perception as would attend the activity of those 
muscular and vital sensations which belong to the processes of 
the animal life. These sensations, when closely attended to in 
later knowledge, are at best but vague and indefinite ; and when 
they fill up the whole world of our conscious life, they must 
be obscure indeed. 

From this condition the soul is aroused when it 
and develop- gs begins to attend either to a sensational excitement, or 
ment of atten- ^ Q ^ Q reg p 0ns i ve perceptional act. The soul scarcely 
can be said to have sensations even, till it is con- 
3cious of some sharp or positive experience of pain or pleasure. 
Much less can it be said to perceive, till its attention is aroused, 
repeated, and fixed upon some single sensible percept. 

We are not to suppose that the attention, in either of these 
directions, is developed at a single bound, or that its energy is 
attained by one spasm of effort ; nor that the soul maintains 
itself always in the attent condition which at first it attains only 
now and then. All analogies from the states of our mature ex- 
perience would lead us to believe that the soul now rises for a 



§ 112. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 153 

moment into fixed attention, and then sinks again into blank 
inanity. 

Nor, again, are we to believe that the attention can only be 
aroused or occupied by a single sense at once, but rather that 
two or more of the senses may be exercised at the same time upon 
their appropriate objects, and thus the development of one of the 
senses may aid that of the others. This view is altogether con- 
sistent with nature and experience, and with the observations 
which we are able to make of the successive efforts which the 
infant makes to correct his mistakes and to perfect the training 
of his powers. As it is true with the adult, so is it with the 
infant; the several capacities are developed together and aid one 
another. 

§ 112. The sense-perceptions which we should expect 
would be developed first are the muscular and vital. If, w i Jic j; °thelev- 
however, we perceive only so far as we attend, we Sloped" 6 
ought not to call these sense-perceptions till they are 
connected with other perceptions which are more positive and 
objective, as the perceptions of sight and touch. 

We should also suppose that the three senses of hearing, taste, 
and smell, would spring into activity next in order. Observa- 
tion does not, however, confirm these anticipations. The sense 
of hearing is used, in some feeble degree, a few days after birth, 
scarcely in such a manner or degree as to be called attentive or 
discriminating. The sense of taste is still later. At first, the 
infant swallows medicine as readily as milk. It is not till some 
four weeks have elapsed that it distinguishes the one from the 
other. The sense of smell is exercised still later. Others say 
taste and smell are active from the first. Hearing, though feebly 
developed at first, remains the longest, as death comes on. 

It is with the eye and the hand that the soul begins fixedly to 
attend, and of course, effectively to perceive. But with which 
does it first begin — with the eye, or with the hand? It is impos- 
sible to answ T er. Perhaps it were safer and more exact to say 
that it begins with neither alone, but w T ith both, each aiding the 
other. 

In our analysis we begin with the hand. Whatever may be 
true of the eye, w^e are certain that intelligent perception by 
touch must be acquired very early for those who can see. 

7* 



154 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 113. 

§ 113. We begin, then, with touch. Our problem 
mett onouX is, to show by what steps of touch we acquire the 
perception of extension and of outness or externality 
— by which we mean separableness from the body — or the not- 
body. We assume that by original perception the non-ego proper 
is distinguished from the sentient ego, or the ego which animates 
the sensorium. We do not ask at what time this distinction is 
consciously developed; we only contend that it can not be acquired, 
Our present inquiry is by what process the knowledge of the non- 
ego as the not-body, is attained. 

The first step is for the soul to know familiarly its own body 
as bounded by a limiting surjaee. This knowledge it acquires by 
contrasting the muscular and tactual perceptions. The muscular 
and tactual perceptions we suppose to be familiarly known. By 
means of the distinguished muscular sensations we perceive the 
interior of the body which the spirit inhabits and controls. Upon 
contact of the sensorium with what are afterwards discovered 
to be material objects, we have only certain affections upon its 
own surface. When an infant lays its hand on anything flat 
and smooth, it perceives a portion of its own body in a given state 
of activity. If this surface is triangular, a corresponding portion 
of the sensorium is similarly excited, and so on. As soon as the 
two classes of sense-perceptions are familiar by attention, the 
muscular sensations give us the knowledge of the interior space 
that the sensorium occupies, and the tactual sensations give the 
knowledge of its bounding or limiting enclosure. The infant 
is constantly made aware of this limit, by contact with the sur- 
rounding objects that excite it to sentient activity. In the warm 
surroundings of a bath, bed, or heated apartment, the surface 
of the body is defined by a gentle glow. If the temperature is 
cool, it is revealed by the rough and comfortless chill, that creeps 
over and pinches the sensitive wrapping. 

The second step is to distinguish the two descriptions of tactual 
sense-perceptions which are experienced as the hand is applied 
to any part of the body as the arm, or to the non-sentient tabic 
In the one case the surface that is touched, also gives the sense- 
perceptions of being touched; in the other it gives or so to speak 
txperiences none. The absence of capacities for sensation distin- 
guishes a certain class of objects as unlike all those whiclx have 



§ 113. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OP SENSE-PERCEPTION. 155 

them. This is the distinguishing mark of extra-corporeal objects. 
It is not, however, enough that objects are distinguished as extra- 
corporeal. They must be also known as separated in space — i. e., 
they must be known as extended, and thereby involving a space 
which is bsyond or without the body. This suggests the next 
acquisition. 

Third, Objects corporeal and extra-corporeal can be grasped 
by the hand, and in this way can be known as occupying space. 
Wlien a blind man grasps his own arm or wrist, he knows cer- 
tain muscular sensations as extended through and posited in the 
space that lies within the surfaces that he touches. If his wrist 
is withdrawn from the enclosing grasp, and an extra-corporeal 
object is inserted in its place, the adjustments of the grasping 
hand are the same as b3fore, and the dim knowledge of the space 
which these adjustments involve is also the same. All is the 
same, except the sensations located within the wrist. The wrist 
is known by direct perception as space-filling. The enclosing 
hand is a measure of the space enclosed. The same enclosing or 
grasping hand measures the surface of another body, whether it 
is applied to a sentient or a non-santient object. The last is mea- 
sured by the first, by means of the extension of the enclosing hand. 
It occupies, however, precisely the space which the other filled. 
It is known, therefore, as space- filling, and as filling other space 
than that occupied by any part of the body. 

In this way it is possible for the mind, by touch alone to 
reach the extra-corporeal world, and to know that all its objects, 
like the body with which it is directly connected, occupy space. 

These processes are all acquired, and that which is acquired in 
them all is the facility of using one percept as the sign of 
another, or of some relation which is indicated by the percept as 
its invariable attendant — e. g., outness, extension, direction, dis- 
tance, size, and the like. 

The theory of sense-perception, taught in this volume, coin- 
cides with the theories of John Miiller and Sir William Hamilton, theory ^oTthe 
so far as they agree, viz., that we have a direct or intuitive per- perception of 
ception of the extended organism, and an indirect or acquired ganic. 
perception of extra-organic matter. Miiiler explains the last pro- 
cess, substantially as we have done, though with less detail. Hamilton explains 
it thus : " The existence of an extra-organic world is apprehended * * * in the 
eonsciousnesa that our locomotive energy is resisted, and not resisted by aughi 



156 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 114. 

in our organism itself. For in the consciousness of being thus resisted is in- 
volved as a correlative, the consciousness of a resisting something." (Appendix 
to Works o/Reid, Note D» 28; cf. 20, 23, 24, 25, 26; cf. 864, Note D.) 

This explanation of the process supposes the application of the relation of 
causation. For it represents the locomotive energy as a causative energy which, 
unresisted, would produce certain effects, which effects are overborne or set aside 
by an agent which is known to be neither the ego nor the organism with which 
the ego is connected. From the presence of this new and strange effect, the ex- 
istence of an extra-organic agent is inferred. The theory is in principle the same 
with that of Dr. Thomas Brown which we have already noticed, with this dif- 
ference, that Brown supposes the cause and its activities to be both spiritual and 
non-extended, while Hamilton supposes the locomotive energy to be known 
directly as extended. The distinction of body and not-body is better explained 
by the presence and absence of certain tactual and muscular sense-perceptions. 
When the reflective consciousness has been developed and the relation of causa- 
tion is familiarly handled by the mind, this relation would confirm and make de- 
finite the belief in extra-organic beings and agents. 

A more serious difficulty is involved in Hamilton's theory — the same, indeed, 
which in another way is fatal to that of Brown's, viz., it seems not to explain how 
with the necessity of finding for this effect an extra-organic cause, this " correla- 
tive " " resisting something " must also be proved to be extended. The agent, 
the ego, as a percipient and actor is not extended ; then why may not the extra- 
organic agent and non-ego be non-extended, or why must it be extended ? How 
is it shown to be correlative so far as to be extended, except it is taken to be the 
analogon of the extended organism, i. c., like it in being spatial in many per- 
cepts, etc., etc., but unlike it in respect to other sense-percepts, as we have ex- 
plained. 

§ 114. We consider next the development of the 
of vision Pmen eye. Vision seems to begin at that early period 
when the bright and steady light attracts and holds 
the infant's eye, or when it carries the eye with itself wherever 
it leads. Certain objects that glisten with reflected rays, or that 
are brilliant with intense color, are soon separated from the 
background of undistinguished things against which they are 
projected, or athwart which they are moved. It is not easy to 
decide how much of intellectual perception attends this early 
moving and fixing of the eyes, and how much is an unconscious 
and reflex response of the nervous organism to the stimulating 
light. The eye is so constructed that only a single portion of 
the retina can give a perfect image of an object that comes 
within the field of view ; so that when a bright object comes 
before the eye at all, it will hold or draw the eye to or after it, 
by the reflex action of the nerves which its brightness excites. 
Whenever the mind perceives such an object as a distinct and 



§ 114. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONS. 157 

definite percept, then vision begins. Such a percept, as has 
already been explained, is known as a non-ego, and is known to 
be extended in twa dimensions. 

We have already given the reasons why, in the beginnings 
of vision, the percept should not be located in the eye (§ 101). 
It remains for us to show why it should be projected in space, 
With this projection of visible objects afront of the eye, begins 
the development, or education of the sense of vision, if the act of 
location is acquired, and not intuitive. It is not easy to explain the 
steps of the process, or the grounds why the percepts are carried 
forward into space, even if they are not located in the eye. Some 
contend that no explanation can be given, because none is re- 
quired ; that there is no problem, because there is no process, it 
being, in their view, by an ordinance of nature that the object 
seen should first be seen at the eye's focal distance forward, and 
thus here is fixed the original starting-point from which all the 
acquired judgments of distance proceed. They insist that all 
objects, as viewed by the act of original vision, are seen in a 
hollow sphere — forward, above, below, on this side and that — 
whose radius is this focal distance. Such must of necessity hold 
that the act of projection is original, and not in any sense ac- 
quired. 

Those who hold that it is acquired, give various explanations 
of the process ; in all of which they must call in the aid of the 
hand. The most plausible is the following: The eye, though, 
like the hand, it is moved by muscles which are directed by the 
aid of the appropriate sensations, does not, when in its normal or 
healthy state, give any tactual sensations by the felt contact 
of its surface with the objects which affect it, nor do the muscular 
sensations themselves attract the attention. We may assume 
that, in the way explained, space and spatial objects external to the 
body have become familiar through the sense of touch and the use 
of the hand. At the surface of the eye such tactual experi- 
ences are wanting, and of course no outer limits can be defined. 
So soon as the lids are raised and the experiences of color are 
made, the eye gropes after these strange objects, but cannot 
touch them. It reaches after them, as it were, but they are 
beyond its reach. But still they exist. If they draw near t 



158 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 114 

while the eye regards them, they fill more of its field of viewj 
if they withdraw, they occupy a less extensive plane. Mean- 
while, as they draw near or remove, the eye is adjusted to perfect 
vision, and its adjustments and motions are known by changing 
sensations; but still the objects cannot be touched, nor can they 
be reached. By all these criteria, visible percepts are strikingly 
contrasted with those which are tangible — they exist, but they 
cannot be touched by the eye, nor can the eye reach them. They 
are in space somewhere without the body. This somewhere is 
definitely fixed as soon as the seen object is also touched. The 
where of the percept after which the eye inquires, is answered as 
soon as the hand touches the object seen. The limited distance 
which is measured by the sensations proper to the extended hand, 
becomes fixed and clear, and the object held by the hand and 
gazed at by the eye is distinctly projected in space. Hence- 
forward the eye and the hand go together beyond the limited 
range which is at first allotted to them, into the unexplored 
infinitude that awaits their labors. 

Then comes the power to set up a field of vision. This sup- 
poses some knowledge of place, of relative distance and size, in 
gaining which the eye is aided greatly by the hand. First, the 
mind must construct certain definite objects of vision out of the 
bewildering multitude of colors and outlines which present them- 
selves to the unpracticed eye. Next, it must select a few of these 
objects for its observation at a single look. These it must place in 
a plane more or less distant, leaving out of distinct vision objects 
near and remote, estimating distance and judging size in the ways 
already explained. These acts and j udgnunts of the quick and 
sensitive eye, aided by the slower and cooler hand, must be 
repeated again and again, till any required field of vision can be 
selected and constructed with ease and precision, so that we 
seem to see space, distance, and dimensions by the simple glance 
of the eye. These space relations, when once learned, are so few, 
so simple, so easily indicated, and so permanently established, that 
they seem never to have been learned at all. They become en- 
twined in all our associations ; they leap at once to the imagina- 
tion ; they preoccupy it so completely as to shut out the possi- 
bility of the opposite ; their suggestions are accepted by the in« 
tellect with a rapidity that often leads to illusion and error 



§ 115. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 159 

Hence is it that all the so-called subjective sensations are at once 
projected into space. Hence, when the veins of the retina them- 
selves become the objects of vision, they are seen afront of the 
eye, a dark arborescence projected on an illuminated background. 
Hence, when we look into a mirror, either natural or artificial, 
we see all its reflected objects in the depths of space. Hence the 
spectra of the imagination, the visions which haunt the phantasy 
of the diseased and insane, are all distributed in space, 
§ 115. We are next to show how the infant learns 

. n, i • -i 7 n Combination 

to combine the perceptions oi touch with those ot of touch and 
vision. We may do this by considering how the infant 
learns to connect the hands as seen with the hands as directly 
felt. Before this is possible, the hands as seen must become 
familiar as definite and separated objects, with forms that are 
easily recognized. The muscular sensations must also have 
become definite and distinct to the attentive intellect. 

This knowledge being given, the mind must learn to connect 
the hands as seen, with the hands as moved and touched. To 
unite these two percepts is one of the first and most important 
of the acquired perceptions which the infant masters. How this 
can be effected, seems not difficult to explain. It should be con- 
sidered, for the reason already given, that these two classes 
of objects are the only objects with which the infant is conver- 
sant. These occupy its chief attention. They constitute and com- 
plete its universe. 

Let one hand lie upon another, or let the hand rest upon a 
material object that does not belong to its body. The eye watches 
the process, and as the hand holds the surface with its sentient 
touch, so the eye holds it with its gaze ; it observes that what 
was still is now in motion ; that what was seen is now covered, 
and by the interposing hand. Or, if the process be described in 
terms taken from the language of vision only, one patch of color 
or shade or light is obscured by another which moves before 
it and hides it from the view. Or, one is moved behind another, 
and is hidden from sight. In this way the two percepts coincide 
m place, and one is made the sign of the other ; when one is seen, 
it is expected that the other will be felt ; when one is felt, the 
mind expects that the other will be seen. As the mind proceeda 
and masters the other relations of form, place, size, and dis- 



160 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §115. 

tance, etc., the import of either percept as a sign of the othei 
becomes to the same extent enlarged. It is a sign not only of 
the other as a percept simply, but of all the relations which it 
signifies. 

These acquisitions are in fact achieved by every person born 
blind, to whom sight is given in later years. In infancy, the eye 
performs a service similar to that which it renders to the blind 
who learn to see in mature life ; with this difference, that the 
eye does not wait to furnish its aid till the hand has done all that 
can possibly be accomplished without it. "When the eye and the 
hand are developed together, by their mutual aid they greatly 
shorten the processes of acquisition, and of making the results 
more sure. What each can do apart, we have already con- 
sidered. It is fair to infer that in the processes by which infancy 
makes its acquisitions, whatever each can do best it will perform 
for the other. If the touch gives the first distinct knowledge of 
the third dimension of space, it places this knowledge at the ser- 
vice of the eye. The eye, if it can not directly discern distance, 
can yet observe and interpret the signs of distance. The hand 
can determine the relative distances of objects only within its 
reach ; or the foot must measure off distance by counting the steps, 
carrying the body as it goes. But the eye can, by a glance, reach 
for rods and furlongs and miles, and measure with sufficient ac- 
curacy for the common occasions of life. 

That the eye and the hand must conspire in in- 
up^n Se ki&nS fancy, is not only fairly to be inferred, but it is evi- 
dent from observation of the experiments which the 
infant is continually making with both. The infant learns to 
touch ; by which we mean not merely that it learns to use its 
hands, but that it learns to use them with intelligence, and to in- 
terpret its touch-perceptions. It is equally evident that it learns 
by practice not only to use its eyes in seeing, and to judge what 
its sight-perceptions signify, but also to combine its sight and 
touch-perceptions together, and thus makes the one serve as the 
signs of the other. 

As the eye of the infant rolls or rests in the socket, or is 
caught for an instant by the excitement of the stimulating light, 
so the hands and arms, at first, hang uselessly from the shoulders, 
or dangle hither and thither, resting on whatever may sustaiu 



§ 115. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 1G1 

them. They can neither grasp nor hold, much less can they be 
carried to a point on which desire fixes the eye ; nor can they, in 
obedience to desire, hold and carry an object, — as food to the 
mouth, — or release it "when brought to its destined place. All 
these uses of the hand must be learned by attention. That they 
are learned, is evident from the aimless use of the hands at first, 
from the many experiments and failures and final successes 
which follow, and from the gratification that is manifested at 
success. 

The earliest objects which attract the persistent attention of 
the infant's eye are the hands. As these are to be the instru- 
ments of its activity and the arbiters of its earthly dastiny, it is 
natural and appropriate that they should occupy the largest 
share of its earliest notice. It is impossible that it should be 
otherwise f jr two or three reasons. They are always before its 
eyes, ever flitting to and fro in aimless and convulsive move- 
ments, and challenging its notice as they are passing across its 
limited field of vision. As if to concentrate the whole energy 
of the attention upon the action of the hands, the infant is short- 
sighted, and, till it is four months old, observes only the nearest 
objects, and then objects somewhat more remote, till, by gradual 
advances, the whole spectacle of the universe is unveiled and 
opened to its view. 

It is manifest that the explanation of the process by which the 
infant learns to connect and unite the visual and tactual per- 
cepts of its hands, applies equally well to those acts by which it 
learns to connect the percepts of all material objects, so as to 
view them as single things. That this power is acquired, and 
neither innate nor connate, is obvious. That it is acquired by 
observation and experiment, is equally clear. The world of the 
eye and the world of the hand are at first diverse and apart. 
How to bring them together, is the first problem of infancy. 
Upon this problem it tasks its earliest powers. "When it is 
achieved these two worlds rush together, coinciding so completely 
that it seems inconceivable that they should ever have been per- 
ceived apart. 

We need not pursue our synthesis further. We need not 
ask further how the infant builds up the rest of its knowledge, 
or acquires its infant skill. We need not ask how the infaut 



J 52 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §115, 

learns to use its hands, to grasp, to hold, and to handle a spoon, 
a fork, or a knife, or how it learns to walk or talk ; for all these 
processes can be explained by analogous activities which occur 
within our recollection. Still less need we ask how it learns to 
connect the percepts of smell, of taste, and of sound, with their 
appropriate sight or touch objects. These problems present no 
difficulty and require no solution. 

It is instructive to watch the timid yet adventurous experiments which an in- 
fant makes, especially with its hands. First, it strikes about in aimless efforts, 
or makes a play for its eyes with the half convulsive motions of its little fists. 
By a gradual progress it learns to reach after the few objects which the eye has 
separated from the background — the infinite unknown which lies beyond its 
reach and beyond its aims. Soon it endeavors to lay hold of objects which the 
eye rests upon, though quite beyond its reach. It clutches after the distant 
lamp, the fire blaze, or the polished fire-iron. By slow but sure progress it 
masters the objects within its own apartment, and learns to apply its rude 
standards of size and distance to the world within its vision, the finite universe 
which its four walls enclose. All beyond is infinitude. During this time, as has 
been said, the infant is short-sighted, till many months of its life have elapsed, 
with the manifest design that it should be forced to master all near objects before 
it is tempted beyond. 

If we would conceive how the world out of doors may appear to an infant 
brought to the window, after it is somewhat familiar with the form, size, and re- 
lative positions of the objects within we may read what is told of Caspar 
Hauser, who is said to have been confined, till the age of seventeen, in a darkened 
apartment, without communication with nature by the senses, or with man by 
language. The story, whether true or false, meets the case. " I directed him," 
says his teacher, " to look out of the window, pointing to the wide and extensive 
prospect of a beautiful landscape that presented itself in all the glory of sum- 
mer, and asked him whether what he saw was not very beautiful. He obeyed, 
but instantly drew back with visible horror, exclaiming, ' ugly, ugly !' and then 
pointing to the white wall of his chamber, he said, ' there not ugly/ Several 
years after, his friend asked him if he recalled the remembrance of the scene, 
and of his own feelings, and he said : ' What I then saw was very ugly ; for 
when I looked at the window, it always appeared to me as if a window-shutter 
had been placed before my eyes, upon which a wall-painter had spattered the con- 
tents of his different brushes, filled with white, blue, green, yellow, and red 
paint, all mingled together. Single things, as I now see things, I could not at 
that time recognize and distinguish from each other. That what 1 then saw were 
fields, hills, and houses ; that many things which at that time appeared mach 
larger were in reality much smaller, while many other things which appeared 
smaller were in reality larger than other things, is a fact of which I was after- 
ward convinced in the experience gained in my walks.' He also said, ' that in 
the beginning, he could not distinguish between what was really round and -what 
was only painted as round or triangular. The men and horsei represented on 
sheets of pictures appeared to bo precisely as men and horses carved on wood."' 
— Caspar TJavner : An Aceount, etc. (translated from the German"), pp. 88, S9 
2:1 edition. Boston, 1S;J3. 



§116. DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 163 

§ 116. The phenomena attendant upon the acquisi- 
tion of sight by persons who had been blind from birth K, upontS 
have already been referred to as illustrating and sig C ht. ery ° f 
establishing some of these positions. They deserve a 
separate and more particular notice. 

The cases which are most easily accessible to the English 
reader — which are, indeed, the most satisfactory and decisive 
of any on record — are those reported in the Philosophical Trans- 
actions of the Royal Society of London for the years respectively, 
1728, 1801, 1807, 1826, and 1841. The persons operated upon 
differed greatly in respect to age, mental capacity, and the degree 
of their previous blindness. The observations and experiments 
with all of them may be accepted as having established the fol- 
lowing facts and truths : — 

The patients, as soon as they began to see, saw objects not only 
as colored, but as extended. Their experiences gave no counte- 
nance whatever to the views of Stuart and Brown, that color can 
be perceived without extension, and that the two are united by 
inseparable association. It is true that in almost every case the 
patients, previously to their recovery of sight, had some experience 
of light, and of course of light superficially extended or diffused. 
But this experience of light was so obviously dependent upon the 
affection of the retina, as to indicate, if not to prove, that any ex- 
perience of light whatever involves the perception of extension. 

The extension which they perceived by sight was in two di- 
mensions only. This was made evident from a few experiments 
instituted with express reference to this point in the case of one 
of the most intelligent. A solid cube and a solid sphere were 
both taken by him to be simply discs or planes. A solid cube 
and a flat projection of the same were both taken to be flat and 
in every respect alike. A pyramid, when turned toward him so 
as to present one of its sides only, was called a triangle. When 
the pyramid was turned so as to expose a part of another side, 
he could not make out what it was. 

As to distance from the eye, or the place where objects are 
located in original perception, the testimony is unanimous and 
decisive that objects at first seem very near — how near, could not 
be exactly known — and that the relative distance of each object 
beyond this indeterminate limit is learned by experience. Most 



164 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. $116. 

of the patients were afraid to move, lest they should hit against 
objects that were comparatively remote. Two or three of the 
patients, in attempting to reach objects extended to them, 
clutched behind the objects when held near before them, and 
when more remote, only succeeded iu grasping them after re- 
peated efforts. Cheselden's boy said, at first, that all objects 
touched his eye. The boy reported by Sir Edward Home (1807) 
said the sun and the candle touched his eye, even before the 
cataracts were removed ; and, just after the first operation, said 
the head of the surgeon did the same. But after a second opera- 
tion, he said the sun and the candle did not touch his eye . It is 
probable that the objects which were said to touch the eyes, in 
these two cases, stimulated them so actively as to present some 
analogy to the muscular sensations accompanying the touch, with 
which, in every possible form, the patient was so familiar. Hence 
they interpreted and called these experiences perceptions of touch. 

All these persons were forced to learn by experience to com- 
bine the percepts of sight with the familiar impressions of touch, 
so as to translate the one into the other. All experienced a 
difficulty similar to that of Cheselden's boy with the dog and 
cat. When they saw objects a second time, and were not certain 
that they could recall them, they reached for them with the 
hand, and could not be content till they handled them a second 
time. Their judgments of size and form all needed to be 
acquired. Visible mathematical figures, as a square, a circle, 
and rectangle, could not be recognized till the fingers were re- 
sorted to. One patient did make out one or two of these figures, 
by drawing the outline with her finger in the air, and, as it were, 
constructing the figure with the finger after the lines presented 
to the eye. Another could not understand how drawings of 
objects could represent the objects, till he revived the percepts 
of the objects by his fingers. Most of them were embarrassed by 
drawings and pictures, not being able to see likenesses or to 
understand perspective, or to perceive that light and shade repre- 
sented form and distance. Their judgments of the comparative 
size of objects were embarrassing to them. Cheselden's boy 
knew that his own room was a part of the house, but could not 
easily believe the house was so much larger than the apartment. 

The testimony is uniform, also, that, in learning to see objects 



§ 117. THE PRODUCTS OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 165 

as separate things, the constructive power is brought into play, 
requiring intelligent attention and constant memory on the part 
of the percipient, and that it is only slowly, at best, that the 
mind learns to separate material objects, to construct its field of 
vision, and to locate objects as near and remote by the various 
signs which it learns to interpret. In short, these observations 
and experiments confirm and illustrate all that has been said in 
this chapter in respect to the early development and growth of 
sense-perception. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE PRODUCTS OF SENSE-PERCEPTION; OR, THE PERCEPTION 
OF MATERIAL THINGS. 

§ 117. Thus far we have considered sense-percep- Material thin 
tion as a process, and in its growth. We proceed and sense-per- 
next to discuss its products as the permanent pos- 
sessions of the mind. We have already explained of knowledge 
in general, that, as an activity of the intellect, it is brought to 
its appropriate termination when its objects can, so to speak, be 
detached from the process by which they were so matured as 
afterward to be retained, recalled, and recognized. This is 
eminently true of sense-perception, which is only complete when 
it results in the knowledge of material things. A material thing 
or object, as known by sense-perception, is a completed whole made up 
of separate percepts. We distinguish the knowledge of things 
from the knowledge of percepts. A percept, as has been ex- 
plained, is the appropriate object of the mind's knowledge through 
a single organ of sense. A thing is the product of the mind's 
knowledge in apprehending several percepts as united into a 
finished whole, with the relations which such a combination 
involves. 

As an example of the difference, take an apple. The apple 
seen, touched, smelled, tasted, and heard, are separate percepts 
The object perceived by the combination of all these percepts is 
the apple, as a material thing. The separate original perceptions 



166 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 117 O. 

give as many percepts. The original and acquired perceptions, 
when united, give material objects or things. 

Two questions now present themselves for consideration : By 
what means, and under what relations, does the mind unite separate 
percepts into things or objects? Under what conditions does the 
mind so complete its knowledge of percepts and of things, as to be 
able to retain and recall them as permanent objects of knowledge? 

We begin with the first of these questions : By what steps, and 
under what relations, does the mind unite percepts into things or 
material objects? We answer: — 

Percepts are united into things by two successive steps or 
stages, to each of which there is an appropriate product. By the 
first the mind unites these percepts into a material thing or 
whole, under the relations of space and time. By the second, it 
connects the parts of the whole under the relation of substance 
and attributed quality. The several percepts united in both these 
relations constitute what is commonly known as a material thing. 

It has already been shown how the percepts of sight and the 
percepts of touch are referred by the mind to the same portion 
of space. The seen hand and the touched hand are found to lie 
in the same direction, and to be at the same distance from any 
and every part of the body. In like manner the apple 
or the egg, the chair or the table, which is seen and that 
which is touched are found to coincide in the same por- 
tion of space. They are in the same place. By a similar process 
the sentient body itself must have been previously perceived to be 
one material thing. 

§ 117 a. This coincidence in place is the product of 

The first stage B . r . r , 

of perception; the first constructive or synthetic act by which the 

limited to co- , , , . 

incidence in mind, in sense-perception, unites percepts into a thing. 

space and time. . . , . . 

feuch an act is complete wiien it gives a material object 
or whole, in this lower sense, viz., a combination of the percepts 
that are appropriate to different organs of sense, by means 
of the relations of space and time. The percepts of sight and 
touch are inseparably united in space, and this is the earliest 
combination made by the intellect which may properly be called 
a material thing. With these two are connected the percepts 
of taste, smell, and sound, at first under the relation of simulta- 
neous occurrence in time. 



§ 117«. THE PRODUCTS OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 167 

It is obvious that the several percepts, when viewed as con- 
nected into a whole under these relations, have a very unequal 
relative importance. The percepts of sight and touch, to those 
who can see and feel, as they are defined in place and eminently 
objective, constitute the material object as it is usually conceived 
and named. The percepts of smell, sound and taste, are its 
invariable attendants in time, until they are connected with it by 
another relation. To those who see, even though they can also 
feel, the leading percepts are those of sight. The name of an 
object suggests its visible form and color, etc., rather than the 
object as touched; a certain and decisive evidence that the object 
as seen is that which is most prominent and attractive to the 
mind, and therefore is most readily recalled to the imagination. 
To the blind, on the other hand, it is the object as touched, or 
the tangible percept, which is suggested by the name, and is re- 
presented to his imagination as the thing perceived. The other 
percepts, of taste, smell, and sound, are connected with the com- 
bined percepts of touch and sight less readily, and by a looser bond. 
As at first experienced, they are referred to the sentient organism, 
and are less readily separated from it. They are more sensational 
and subjective, less perceptional and objective. As to the man- 
ner and the relations by which they are first connected with the 
percepts of sight and touch, philoso23hers are not agreed. It 
must at least be true, that whatever other relations unite them to 
material things, they must at the very earliest period be their 
constant attendants in place and time. 

The conception of a material thing or whole, made up of ex- 
tended parts or single percepts, is, however, very equivocal in its 
import and varied in its application. To an infant with limited 
experience, the greater part of an apartment may be perceived 
as a single object or thing ; the only separable objects in it being 
the chair, table, and a few utensils, the position of which is often 
changed. To a child, a horse and vehicle, seen together for the 
first time, may be a whole, or a single object. The savage per- 
ceives a ship or steamer as one huge animal. Many observations 
and experiments, much information from others, repeated lessons 
inferred from words and names properly applied, are required to 
enable the child to distinguish things as wholes and parts ; to 
hold apart objects that should not be united; and to unite object* 



168 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 118. 

that should not be divided. The point of view from which 
objects are observed, and the purpose or use to which they are to 
be applied, direct in the formation and application of names, and 
determine whether this or that object shall be regarded as a 
whole or part of a thing. A house with its grounds, the house 
alone, an apartment, a door, a window, the smallest perceived 
portion of either, each and all, are things or parts of things, 
according to the principle or use which regulates the application 
of the respective terms. But whether a perceived whole is 
greater or smaller in its spatial dimensions, it must have defined 
spatial dimensions and be capable of being perceived by one of 
the leading senses. Whatever the thing may be, the percepts 
of which it consists must at least be capable of being perceived 
as occupying the same space, and of occurring together in time. 
§ 118. By the second stage or step of the percep- 

The second . J & r ft 

»tage : The re- tive process, the several percepts or parts are con- 

lation of sub- . 

stance and at- nected with one another, or with the whole which 
they constitute, as substance and attribute. Thus the 
objects of the sense of touch are known as hard or soft, rough or 
smooth, elastic or non-elastic, etc., etc. Those of sight are red, 
yellow, orange, violet, and green; those of hearing are sharp, 
smooth, harsh, and sweet ; those of smell are pungent, exhilarant, 
fetid ; and all these qualities are ascribed to an object to which 
they belong, and of which they are affirmed to be attributes, 
Certain relations of time and extension, as long and short, square 
and round, are in like manner treated as properties or attributes. 
They are more than parts of the wholes which they help to consti- 
tute; they are connected with a being or agent, the nature of 
which they define, the presence of which they signify, and the 
powers of which they manifest. 

It is not here in place to discuss the nature of this special 
relation w T hich has occasioned so much speculation and dispute 
among metaphysicians (P. iv. c. vii). It is sufficient to say here, 
that as we have already shown that knowledge of every kind 
necessarily gives beings and relations, or beings as related, we 
are prepared to understand the definition of a substance as a 
being that is capable of being distinguished by relations ; and of 
attributes, qualities, and properties, as relations used to distinguish 
ind describe or define beings. That the objects of perception 



§118. THE PRODUCTS OF SENSE -PERCEPTION. 169 

both wholes and parts — i. e., combined and single percepts — are 
in fact connected in this way, is too obvious to require illustra- 
tion and proof. 

The relations most frequently employed as attributes are the 
relations of time, space, and causality. As soon as beings are 
known as enduring for a longer or shorter period, or having this 
or that size or form, and these relations are used to designate or 
distinguish them from other beings, these relations are attributed 
to them as distinguishing characteristics. As soon as the sense- 
object is known — i. e., thought of as the producer of sensations, 
as of smell, taste, or sound, it would be known as endowed with 
distinguishable capacities to produce these effects. The sensations 
would, in their turn, be referred to these beings as their causes or 
originators. No illustration is needed to prove that the sense- 
element in these three percepts is very early regarded as an 
effect. So far as the mind is passive in sensation, it must always 
be so regarded. The sensation is experienced when the object or 
being is near; it is felt less intensely when the object is remote; 
its quality or intensity vary with the varying conditions of the 
object. An object with a certain form, feel, or color, when 
brought into contact with the tongue or palate, causes a certain 
taste. Touched by the hand, no special sensation follows; but 
touched by the tongue and palate, there ensues the specific sensa- 
tion of taste. The object touched might have been regarded 
simply as a being or thing; but the object tasted is known as 
also occasioning a sensation. 

It is conceivable, as has been already suggested, that before 
these coexistent and successive percepts and sensations are 
known as substance and attribute, they should be known as con- 
stant attendants, and that, simply as conjoined, the presence 
or the thought of the one should, under the laws of association, 
suggest the thought of the other. Under this relation sense- 
objects are known to animals, which can not and do not distin- 
guish the relation of conjunction from that of causation. If one 
sensation has been experienced in connection with another, the 
repetition of the one brings up the image of the other, and the 
pain and pleasure, the hope and fear which are appropriate to it. 
The dog connects with the whip in the hand of his master the 
thought of chastisement and pain ; with the sight of his gun or 
8 



170 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 118. 

his walking-stick, the excitement of sport or of a ramble. It is 
not easy to assert when and how the two relations are distin- 
guished by man ; that they are distinguished, is obvious, for 
reasons which this is not the place to give. 

That it is not till the second or advanced stage 
aupposefreflex of the perceptive process that percepts are connected 
kLwTedge. 01 under the relation of substance and attribute, is still 
further evident from the fact that the knowledge in- 
volved is indirect and reflex, as distinguished from that which is 
direct and objective. It supposes the objects related — the subject 
of sensations, and the object which occasions them — to be more or 
less familiar, and that both subject and object are projected in the 
view of the mind upon the same plane, so that both become 
objects to its thought. A thing cannot be known as capable of 
producing sensations as effects, unless the body or the soul, one 
or both, are known as the conditions or subjects of its action ; 
and this requires that they should be placed afront the reflecting 
mind by a special effort, which involves a maturity of discipline 
which time alone can develop. Moreover, it supposes some 
progress in generalization, and some sort of induction. Many 
objects must have been touched and seen, before they are so far 
recognized as similar, as to be taken for the same in their causal 
efficiency. Many experiences must be had with the sensations 
of smell, taste, and sound, before these could be invariably 
referred to the same substances, because dependent on their pro- 
perties or attributes. 

In one sense it is true, that an act of sense-perception is not 
complete, and its product is not perfected, until the soul's higher 
energies are awakened, and the object of them has been viewed 
in the higher relations. The human being can scarcely be said 
truly to have perceived even a pebble as a man, till he has 
brought into action all the powers with which he is endowed as a 
man. The infant's eye may not glisten with the penetrating 
sharpness of the eye of the young eagle, and yet may wear the 
softer lustre which betokens the dawning intelligence. The soul 
leaps into no single form of activity, least of all into the full 
development of its higher powers. 

Thus far we have conceived the substance as an object seen and touched, and 
its attributes as capacities to occasion the sensations of smell, taste, and sound 



§ 119. THE PRODUCTS OF SENSE-PERCEPTIONo 171 

We have connected a percept with a percept as substance and attribute — a lead- 
ing percept, as of sight, with a sensational percept as of smell — and called the 
one a thing, and the other its quality. If we push our inquiries a step back- 
ward, and inquire, Which is the substance and which the attribute when the 
object consists solely of a percept of touch and a percept of sight conjoined? we 
answer, That sense-percept is made the substance, which is regarded in the 
relation of cause to the sense-element involved in the other. The object as 
touched and the object as seen, may respectively be substances, in their respective 
relations to the sensations of sight and of touch. We say, it is white — i. e., the 
object which I touch; and again, it is hard — i. e., the object I see — the touch- 
percept and sight-percept being each in their turn taken as beings. 

We may narrow our view still more, and inquire which is the being or sub- 
stance, and which the attribute or quality, when we have a single percept only, 
and view it in relation to the sentient mind? We reply, The object, perceived by 
sense to be, is known as a substance when considered as the producer of the 
sensation which is the condition of the perception. The tangible or visible 
object, as a being, is distinguishable as a space-occupying or extended something. 
As causing or producing the sensations of sight or touch, it is known as possess- 
ing the attributes of color or touch. The elements involved in every act of sense- 
perception provide for the possibility of this relation. But the relation is not, 
in fact, discerned until the mind projects and brings up the perceived non-ego 
and the sentient ego into the same field of vision, by a reflex and comparing act. 

The sensation — i. e., the effect — is not the property or quality which produces 
it, though the two are called by the same name. Sweetness means one thing 
when it is said to be in the sugar, and another when it is experienced by the 
sentient soul. The heat, in one sense, is, and in another is not, in the fire. 

§ 119. Our second question is, Under what condi- 

. 7 . The conditions 

hons does the mind attain a definite, permanent know- of complete 
ledge of the objects of sense-perception, whether per- 
cepts or things, so that they can be readily recalled and recog- 
nized ? It is only when they are placed so completely in the pos- 
session of the mind as to be at its disposal, that the process of per- 
ception can be said to be complete. When this is done, the object 
of perception is converted into an idea or image. The real object 
apprehended by the mind becomes an intellectual object, having 
a purely ideal or psychical existence. By some writers the spe- 
cial term ideation is appropriated to this process. Sense-percep- 
tion is said to be complete in the highest sense when its object is 
ideated, or becomes an idea. 

But as every perceived object is composed of parts, it follows 
that the perception of a thing can only be complete when the 
mind separates by distinct analysis the parts or percepts of which 
the thing is composed, and unites them by perfected synthesis. 
In other words, the mind must distinguish the constituent per- 



172 THE HUMAN INTELLECT, §119. 

eepts by completed acts of original perception, and combine these 
percepts into things, by finished acts of acquired perception. 
We are naturally led to consider the conditions of complete per- 
ception of the parts and relations of material things. 

(1.) Objects are most easily distinguished which are appre- 
hended with special energy — which are very strikingly contrasted 
with, or which are similar to other objects. A lively color, a 
loud sound, a positive taste, etc., are more readily apprehended 
than a color which is faint, a sound which is feeble, or a taste 
which is not positive. Things are more or less readily per- 
ceived with effect and permanence according as the per- 
cepts of which they are constituted are more or less readily 
known. 

The definiteness with which objects are perceived depends in 
part also on their likeness or unlikeness to other objects in con- 
nection with which they are presented to the mind. Of two per- 
cepts and two things that are very similar, and of two that are 
very unlike, those are more likely to be perceived which are in 
striking contrast to each other, than those which closely resemble 
one another. Two colors, two sounds, etc., as well as two apples 
or two paintings, are each more readily perceived and retained if 
they are strikingly contrasted, than if they are very similar. The 
ground of the likeness or unlikeness, the resemblance or contrast, 
is in part objective, — pertaining solely to the object per- 
ceived. In part it is subjective, and arises from the natural 
or acquired capability of the individual to feel and know. Thus, 
one class of persons are physically incapable of distinguishing 
different colors, i. e., those who are color-blind. Others, who can 
discern the colors which are commonly named, can with difficulty 
distinguish shades of color that are nearly allied. Some persons 
are very insensible to differences and similarities of sounds to 
which others are keenly alive. Even when the original sensi- 
bilities of the senses and aptitudes of the intellect present no diver- 
sity, there are the greatest possible differences of susceptibility, 
arising from differences of habit and attention. 

(2.) Motion heightens the contrasts of perceived objects, and 
gives definiteness to the outline and limits, especially of visible 
percepts. To the infant's eye, moving objects are the first which, 
so to speak, are separated from the undistinguished mass of 



§ 119. THE PRODUCTS OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 173 

blended color, in which the world of matter is at first arrayed. 
From this extended surface of color certain objects are detached, 
as the moving lamp, the walking person, the portable furniture 
and utensils. They pass to and fro athwart the background upon 
which they are projected, and are brought into contrast with its 
unbroken surface, till they take their place in the memory, as the 
first distinct objects with which it is provided. By degrees this 
undistinguished mass of blended light and shade, of form and 
color, is broken up, as one and another separate percept and dis- 
tinguished thing is detached by the mind's observation and is set 
apart in the mind's storehouse as a distinct idea. The influence 
of motion is not limited to visible objects. It is most important 
in giving distinct percepts to the sense of touch. The hand must 
move over the surface felt, or the surface must move over the 
hand, to leave distinct percepts of its limits and qualities. 

(3.) Repetition is an efficient and often an indispensable condi- 
tion to the completion of an act of perception. Even the simple 
percept, as a sound, a color, a taste, is more perfectly mastered 
by being apprehended in successive acts of attention. If several 
percepts are to be united as a single and separate thing, it is still 
more requisite that they be often apprehended by the same or 
continuously connected acts, in order that the object may be 
brought completely into possession and placed entirely at com- 
mand. This is especially necessary if the percept, or object, by 
reason of its spatial extent or the complexity of its elements, is 
beyond the power of the mind to master in a single act. In some 
cases, repetition serves to make the impression more vivid and 
definite. In others, it is required in order that there be any im- 
pression at all. 

(a.) Eepetition often excites and gratifies the interest of the 
soul in the objects perceived, and thus arouses greater energy of 
attention. 

This is illustrated by the example of many single percepts. A 
color or sound gives pleasure when once perceived. Let it solicit 
the mind's notice a second time, and the remembrance of the 
gratification which it gave, will arouse the mind to attend with in- 
creased energy to the object which had previously imparted so 
pleasant an experience. In the recollection of that experience, 
<md with the hope of its renewal, it summons again all its energy oi' 



174 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 119. 

perception. The result is a definite remembrance of every thing 
which the man is competent or prepared to know in respect to it. 
When the attention is solicited again, the mind at once responds 
to the call, withdraws its divided or distracted activity, and, ac- 
cording to its sense of the value of the good to be enjoyed, re- 
sponds with an energetic and attentive gaze. 

(b.) Repetition is still more essential to enable the mind to 
unite into a ivhole the separate parts of objects which cannot be 
grasped by a single act of perception. The examples already 
cited, belong to those objects which require but a single act of 
attention in order to be completely possessed by the mind. There 
is a very large class of objects, however, which consist of too 
many parts to be known by a single effort of perception. These 
must be combined together into one, by successive acts. For 
example, if we perceive a mathematical figure with a very irre- 
gular and complicated outline, it is necessary that we view it in 
separate portions, in order to master the whole. Not only is this 
true, but we often need to review each portion which we have 
already perceived, in order to connect it with the part which was 
perceived previously. After we have followed the outline by 
repeated acts of observation, we need often to review the whole 
as a whole by a rapid succession of acts, or by a single glance 
of the eye to unite the several parts. If we look at a painting, 
we study its several parts, perhaps for hours together, in order to 
gain and carry aw ly a distinct and satisfactory impression of the 
whole. If we look at the front of an edifice that is elaborately 
adorned, we follow the several featv/res one by one in their order, 
often returning upon our course, that we may retain the per- 
ceptions which we have gained. , 

The first efforts of the eye upon such an object are like 
voyages of discovery or movements of military reconnoissance. 
They serve the same purpose as the use of the finding-glass of a 
telescope. The eye runs hither and there with a vague and 
quickly -shifting gaze. It finds one feature after another which 
excites its interest and attracts its attention, and thus learns in a 
general way what material is present for it to work upon. After 
this preliminary work, a second and still another look may be 
required, that the mind may determine which of these parts it is 
worth while to unite together into a continuous and connected 



§119. THE PRODUCTS OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 175 

whole, by successive acts of attentive perception. That this 
theory is correct, is manifest from the difference which we notice 
between observing a complex object when seen for the first time, 
and when it has become familiar by repeated acts of perception. 
If the object is new and strange, we must view it again and 
again in order to bring away any distinct perception. If it is 
familiar, or like a familiar object, a single and hasty look is often 
3nough to secure a clear and permanent knowledge. In such a 
case we know beforehand what we expect to find, and to what 
points we need to direct the eye in order to assure ourselves. 

When the object contains a greater number of parts than we 
can grasp at a single view, there is need of repetition for another 
reason. Let the outline of a mathematical figure be made up 
of many sides, or the face of an edifice consist of a very great 
number of salient features, and it is impossible — let either be 
ever so familiar — that they should be perceived distinctly by any 
single effort of perception. The eye must pass around the outline, 
or sweep across the face by successive acts, and master each portion 
in detail, in order to perceive the whole so as to recall it. 

Here again we notice a striking difference between objects that 
are regular and uniform, and those which are irregular and mul- 
tiform. Of two figures of fifty sides, let one be a regular and an- 
other an irregular polygon. Let the facade of a building be made 
up of similar parts combined after a uniform law of recurrence 
and symmetry; or let the parts have no relation of likeness, 
order, or correspondence. A few repetitions of attention enable 
us to master the one ; very many are required to put us in posses- 
sion of the other. 

(4.) Familiar objects are readily and rapidly perceived. 
Novel or unfamiliar objects are slowly and painfully mastered. 
The fact is unquestioned. The explanation of it is furnished by 
the principles which have been already laid down. 

To familiar shades of color, sounds, forms, touches, tastes, and 
smells, the mind is ready to attend, being guided by its remem- 
brance of what it had perceived before, and incited to attention 
by remembered pleasure. If the combination is also familiar — 
L e., the union of the taste or smell with the color, or of the touch 
with the form — the same law holds good. In looking at an indi- 
vidual chair or table which I have often perceived, or the aspect 



176 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 119. 

of which is familiar, one percept prepares the way for another 
— the color for the form, the form for the weight ; one part for an- 
other, as the leg of the chair or the table for the back of the one 
or the bed of the other ; so that the mind is at once prepared 
for what it expects and readily apprehends what it is wait- 
ing for. 

But let the object be unfamiliar, we are detained upon its parts 
in the way already explained, in order that we may discover 
what they are, so far as to decide which, if any, shall receive our 
attention. If a novel piece of furniture is seen, or a new imple- 
ment, or an edifice singularly planned, or a work of art executed 
after peculiar principles, or if an animal or plant of an unfami- 
liar species or a dress of a new fashion is presented for our in- 
spection, we find it necessary to look again and again at the ob- 
ject. We must feel our way step by step and part by part, to 
find the parts of which it consists, so that we can recall them. 

The acts of repeated perception which are required in such cases, are not to be 
confounded with acts of recognition, or with acts of comparison for the purpose of dis- 
cerning similarities or other relations. 

Acts of recognition and of comparison do indeed usually accompany these 
efforts of perception. But though they often facilitate, they do not constitute 
the acts. This is manifest from the analysis of the acts. A single percept, or 
an object consisting of several percepts, must first be perceived in order to be re • 
cognized. It must be known the first time, or by a first act, in order to be known 
the second time, or by a subsequent act. So, two objects must be perceived, before 
they can be compared and discerned to be similar or alike. 

Some psychologists distinguish perception from sensation thus : " a sensation, 
when recognized as similar to one previously experienced, becomes a perception." 
So Herbert Spencer: " As there can be no classification or recognition of objects 
without perception of them; so there can be no perception of them without classi- 
fication or recognition. " " A perception of it [an object] can arise only when the 
group of sensations is consciously coordinated, and their meaning understood." 
" The perception of any object therefore, is impossible, save under the form of re- 
cognition or classification." (Principles of Psychology, § 46.) 

Morell says: "To perceive a thing, means, first of all, to recognize it ;" and 
again : "When we come to perceive special objects, then it is implied that we not 
only recognize, but that we also begin to classify them."— (Introduction to Mental 
Philosophy, pp. 85, 86, London, 1SG2.) That this is really impossible and logi- 
cally self-contradictory, is obvious from what has been said. Recognition and 
classification attend and assist perception, but they do not constitute tho act. I. 
is obvious that this definition would exclude from the act of perception-proper, all 
that is material to it, or by which it is distinguished from sensation-proper, viz., 
tho apprehension of spatial relations and of externality. Neither of these are 
necessarily involved in tho recognition or comparison of sensations. The view 
would shut us up to a purely idealistic theory. 



§ 119. THE PRODUCTS OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 177 

(5.) To complete and successful perception, some continuance 
of time is necessary. This necessity for time is partly physical 
or organic, and partly mental or psychical. 

The organic necessity lies in the unexplained and ultimate fact, 
that in order to a complete and definite physical impression upon 
the organ, there must be a continued action of its excitant or 
stimulus for a brief but appreciable period. The eye and the ear, 
and the other organs, with their connected nervous apparatus, 
must be occupied with that which excites them, in order to give 
a sensation of which the mind can avail itself to distinct percep- 
tion. Indeed, after the stimulant has ceased to affect the organ, 
the impression, and with it the perception, remains ; as is evident 
from the experiment by which we revolve a burning coal so 
swiftly as to perceive a circle of fire. 

The psychical necessity is obvious from the fact that the mind 
can remit or increase the energy of the organ by its own volun- 
tary agency, and that, to exert this energy also requires time, 
if for no other reason, because the mind acts through and under 
the laws of its physical organism. An increase of energy in a 
part or the whole of the organism is an affair of time, and is 
often a measure of its lapse. 

Jugglers, prestidigitators, etc., perform many of their feats by 
having acquired a capacity of rapid movement which does not 
allow time enough for the sense-parceptions of lookers-on to 
respond to the objects. Often they do not furnish time enough 
for the requisite impressions to be made upon the sense-organs. 
Still more frequently they do not furnish time in which percep- 
tion or intelligence may perceive the objects in their relations, so 
as to discriminate, construct, and interpret what the sense-organs 
respond to. Quickness of movement and quickness of thought 
are the prime requisites for a successful juggler. To this should 
be added the capacity to divert the attention by lively sallies, 
by sudden gestures, rapid speech, exciting tones, and a bold 
address, as well as skill in inventing the physical appliances 
of illusion. A man endowed by nature with aptitudes like 
these, who has learned to make them efficient by art, can 
almost cheat the eyes and ears of the soberest and most practiced 
observer. 

8* 



178 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 120. 

§ 120. It is in place here to consider the doctrine 

Can we attend -,.-,..., , 

to more than wmcn is insisted on so earnestly, particularly by 
time? ms ata Dugald Stewart {Elements, c. ii.), that the mind, in 
perception, can attend to hut one object at a time. 
This position he endeavors to sustain and enforce by examples 
like the following : In viewing a mathematical figure, say of a 
thousand sides, we view each side by a separate effort of atten- 
tive regard, till we have passed around the outline by successive 
acts of perception. The eye and the mind do this so rapidly, 
that when the outline is not very complicated, they seem to grasp 
and master the whole by a single and instantaneous act. So, in 
listening to a concert of music, we think we hear — i. e., atten- 
tively listen to — all the instruments and separate parts together, 
whereas we in fact can attend to but one. But when we seem to 
ourselves to listen to all, we in fact pass so rapidly from one to 
another as to think we attend to all together. A single object he 
defines as the minimum visible in connection with the eye — that 
is, the smallest extension of color or shaded light by which the 
eye can be affected — and would by a similar rule, assert that the 
minimum audible, or the simplest and shortest appreciable sound 
only, can be attended to at a single instant. 

The theory of Stewart labors under the following difficulties : 
It excludes the possibility of comparing objects with one another. 
In order to compare objects so as to discern that they are alike 
or diverse, they must be considered together — that is, they must 
be attentively perceived in combination. In the cases supposed 
by Stewart of the several sides of a complicated outline, or the 
separate sounds of the instruments in an orchestra, the parts of 
the figure must be considered together, to be known to be adjoin- 
ing, near, or remote : the separate notes or souuds also must be 
heard together, to be discerned to be alike or harmonious, to be 
known as higher or lower, or to be connected as before and after 
one another. If the mind could apprehend no more than a 
single object at once, it would be forever and entirely cut off 
from the most important part of its knowledge, viz., the knowledge 
of relations ; or every description of knowledge by synthesis. 

It might perhaps be said, that what Stewart intended to assert 
was this : that in sense-}') ereeption the mind can only attend to 



§ 120. THE PRODUCTS OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 179 

one object at the same indivisible instant; that in those cases in 
which it compares two objects, it connects an object perceived 
with an object represented, a percept with a representation. For 
example, in viewing a complex outline, or hearing the sounds 
of an orchestra, it sees at the present instant a single side or the 
smallest possible part of a side — the minimum visible — or hears 
a single sound or note, and, while seeing or hearing, compares 
with it the side just seen or the sound just heard before. But in 
order to do this, it must apprehend at the same undivided instant 
of time both the side which is seen and the side which is remem 
bered, etc. The doctrine that the mind can apprehend or know 
but a single object at a single instant of time, must be abandoned 
as incompatible with all the higher functions and acquisitions 
of the soul, as well as with the most obvious facts within our 
experience. 

To the knowledge of relations, the knowledge of at least two 
related objects is necessary. To successful or permanent know- 
ledge, even of relations, attention is requisite. The mind must 
then be able to attend to more than a single object. Inasmuch, 
also, as by far the most important of our sense-perceptions are 
concerned with the union of percepts either of the same or differ- 
ent senses, it follows, that the mind can attentively perceive more 
than a single percept. That the mind, in any single act of percep- 
tion, usually attends with unequal energy to each of the related 
percepts, is a point which might be urged with some show of reason. 
When we view two or more objects together for the purpose of 
comparing them, and strain the mind to its utmost energy, the 
excess of energy is directed now to one and now to another. 
Both are attended to, but not with the same intenseness. The 
mind regards one object with more attention than the other, in 
order that it may receive a vivid and distinct impression of it, 
and then compares or in some other way connects it with that 
received from the other. When this is done, the process of 
comparison or connection is complete. This fact has given occa- 
sion to the unwarranted inference, that the mind can attend ta 
but a single object at the same indivisible instant. 



180 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 121. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

ACTIVITY OF THE SOUL IN SENSE-PERCEPTION. 

§ 121. The impression is very common, that the 

4ioD nS hei e d C by soul, in its sense-perception, is simply receptive of 

passive only. e material objects — that it passively receives whatever 

imprints are made from without, exerting no active 

agency of its own. 

By many, this is stated as a positive doctrine, which is consis- 
tently carried out into all its logical inferences and applications. 
Thus Kant and his disciples, as well as many psychologists not 
of his school, assert that the soul, in sense-perception — as indeed 
in all the intuitions of consciousness — is simply receptive, while 
in the higher functions of thought it is self-active. 

Psychologists of the materialistic schoal, and many who are 
not materialists, but are more or less influenced by forms of 
expression and habits of association that are borrowed from 
materialistic theories, not only assert that the mind is passive 
in its sense-perceptions, but even in the higher activities of 
imagination and thought. Locke often inadvertently expresses 
himself in language and by illustrations and analogies borrowed 
from the physics of his time. Condillac not only makes all 
sensations to be impressions imprinted upon the tabula rasa, but 
makes all ideas, or the intellectual copies of sensations, to be 
simply "transformed sensations." With him agree in principle 
the ideologists of the French school. The schools of Benecke 
and Herbart in Germany, as also of Herbert Spencer and his 
disciples in England and America, all formally accept and 
positively teach the same doctrine, or unconsciously assume it to 
be true in their theories and discussions. 

The grounds on which these theories and assump- 

GroundH on 

which the the- tions rest are the following : 1. Ihe general miscon- 
ception of the nature of the soul, and the powers 
and laws of its working, by which it is invested with material 
properties, and interpreted by material analogies. 2. The 
unquestioned fact, that the soul, in sense-perception, apprehends 



§ 122. ACTIVITY OF THE SOUL IN SENSE-PERCEPTION. lb 

and acts by means of a material organism, and has to do solely 
with material objects. 3. The soul is known to be entirely 
dependent on matter for the objects which it perceives. It 
cannot perceive any material object when the object or stimulus 
does not exist. Moreover, the efficiency of the material organ 
or instrument which it employs, depends on the material con- 
ditions which are required for healthful and vigorous activity. 
§ 122. We maintain that in sense-perception the 

.,,,,. . ,„ /»' ii •' Evidence thai 

intellect is active, and for the following reasons: thesouiis ac- 

tive. 

The soul, in sense-perception, is known through 
consciousness to be active, and in a special sense to be self- 
active. To perceive by the senses, is only a special form of the 
soul's general capacity or power to know. To know, is not to 
receive or suffer an impression, but to be certain of a fact/ 
whenever this function is exercised, the soul is self-active, 
whether the objects known are material or spiritual. 

That the soul is active in sense-perception, is still further 
evident from the following facts, most of which have already 
been noticed. The power of the intellect to perceive any objects 
of sense is developed by degrees in the mind of the infant, and, 
after it is fully developed, is exercised at different times and by 
different persons with a greater or less degree of energy. The 
infant at first feels many sensations, but it can scarcely be said 
to know objects at all. In other words, it only perceives with 
the lowest activity possible of a power undeveloped by exercise. 
It is only when its attention is aroused and its power to know is 
acquired and fixed, that it is properly said to perceive. Its at- 
tention is first limited to the objects of a single sense. One after 
another, each of the senses is awakened to action, and, as each is 
aroused, the mind seems to bestow for the time the whole of its 
energy upon the world which a single sense unfolds before it. 
It studies light, it studies colors, it studies forms, it studies 
sounds, it studies touches. Soon, in connection with the move- 
ments of its body, it learns to apprehend the relations of space, 
viz., position, distance, and dimensions. It then gathers its per- 
cepts together, locates them together or apart, attaching them to 
their appropriate places or objects. Then it uses one class of 
percepts in place of another, or as signs of distance, size, etc., m 
all the varieties of acquired perception. 



182 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 123. 

As real and as great a difference is to be observed in the per* 
ceptions of different men ; also in those of the same men at dif- 
ferent times. If we suppose the powers of perception to be de- 
veloped in any number of persons, we cannot fail to notice im 
portant differences in the energy and effectiveness with which 
they are used. Two persons look out upon a landscape, but 
how much more does the one behold than the other! One 
sees countless objects which the other entirely overlooks — houses- 
trees, lawns, lines of beauty, contrasted and varying colors, artis- 
tic groupings, none of which are observed by the other. Num- 
berless sounds await the notice of each. One hears, the other 
fails to hear the crowing cock, the sharp report of the rifle, the 
rattling and rumbling of distant vehicles, the cawing crow, the 
singing of birds. The same is true of the percepts of taste, 
smell, and touch, though in a manner and to a degree less 
striking. 

§ 123. The methods in which the soul exerts its 
tf this "activity! activity are various. First: The soul imparts special 
energy to single organs, so that they perform their 
functions with more than usual efficiency. It can determine an unu- 
sual flow or excitement of the nervous power to the eye, the ear, 
or the hand, thereby rendering each capable of more vivid sensa- 
tions. The process and its effect are both called the innervation 
of the organs. This is accomplished, in all probability, by 
means of the reflex or efferent nervous organism. Whatever 
may be the physical or physiological medium by which the effect 
is produced, its cause is often purely psychical ; the soul itself is 
the originating agent. 

This innervation of a single organ or pair of organs is ob- 
served in cases like the following : The eye rests listlessly 01 
wanders vaguely over a landscape or a crowd of men. In a 
moment it is fixed by some single object ; perhaps through some 
physical stimulus, as a bright light or glaring color ; perhaps by 
something attractive to the feelings only. . The curiosity is 
aroused, and stimulates the organ to do its utmost. Under the 
innervation of the agent of vision, the picture which had before 
been painted dimly on the retina, is suddenly lighted up oa 
though a new force of sunlight had poured upon the object a 
fresh illumination. In a similar way, the soul can awaken th# 



§ 123. ACTIVITY OF THE SOUL IN SENSE-PERCEPTION. 183 

ear to more distinct hearing, by summoning its physical capaci- 
ties to do their utmost. " Did you hear that shriek ?" says one 
man to another : The ears of both are made at cent at once, and 
are physically excited to catch even the feeblest sound, as well 
as mentally to interpret its meaning. 

That the soul possesses and uses this power, is evident still 
further from the fact, that, in order to increase the energy of 
jingle organs, the mind is often forced to suspend the action of 
the others. We close the eyes, that we may hear distinctly a 
doubtful call, or mark the faint ticking of the clock, or do full 
justice to the skill and power with which a superior singer 
manages delicately shaded sounds. We find it difficult, and 
sometimes impossible, to give full effect to two of the senses at 
the same time. We cannot at the same instant read the degrees 
from a measuring scale, and listen to a musical air. 

Second : The mind exercises its activity in its sense-percep- 
tions, by directing its attention to a limited number of sense- 
objects, and neglecting the remainder. 

The mind, as we have seen, can, in a single act of apprehen- 
sion, be occupied with only a few objects, whether they are 
objects of sense, or psychical creations. To do justice to those 
objects, so as to bring away distinct and vivid images of their 
nature and relations, requires that they be exclusively before 
the mind. If they are exclusively present, other objects must 
be withdrawn, unnoticed, or neglected. The fact is unquestioned, 
that the mind does both admit and shut out the objects of sense 
by its active efforts. If we notice and follow our own processes 
in sense-perception, we shall observe that we are constantly em- 
ploying our energies in this twofold way. When, for example, 
we listen to a full orchestra, we may single out the fife, and 
follow its shrill piping, in spite of the crashing masses of sound 
that assail the ear from trumpet, trombone, and drum ; or we 
trace the silver threading of the leading violin, or we combine 
into a single and almost exclusive impression the sounds which 
the strirged or wind instruments make together ; or we give the 
ear to a single part as rendered by its appropriate agents, soaring 
with the air, or sustaiued by the animating tenor, or sympathiz- 
ing with the bass, leaving, in each instance, all the other parts 
unheard. The power of the mind not to perceive or not t(/ 



184 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 123. 

notice, is illustrated by examples like the following : The miilei 
does not hear the sounds from his own mill, while the visitor can 
hear nothing else. The operative does not notice, and therefore 
is not disturbed by the whir of the spiudles and the clash of the 
looms. He can speak and hear with entire freedom, while the 
bystander can do neither, from the distracting and deafening dia. 

Third : The activity of the mind in sense-perception is still 
further illustrated in the great variety of acts and processes 
which we are compelled to perform, in order to create percepts 
and images which we can carry away and retain. These acts 
and processes are acts of selective analysis and constructive syn- 
thesis, by which the soul chooses for itself the objects which it 
will separate and remember as distinct images or things. 

When we are confronted with an object wholly strange and 
new, we often find ourselves making distinct efforts to study it 
part by part, adding one after another, till we have combined all 
its elements into a definite product. Even when the eye is intro- 
duced to a new landscape, it first runs with rapid glances along the 
horizon, resting here and there upon any point or feature which 
invites a prolonged or second look ; then it sweeps hither and 
thither, crossing its path as often as need be, searching out 
whatever may attract its gaze. After having thus constructed 
the outline of the picture, it leisurely paints in the details one 
by one, till the whole is finished, and it can carry away the re- 
membrance of it as a single object ; or perhaps it divides it into 
separate portions, and treasures in the memory cabinet pictures 
of selected parts. But how much does the most careful and 
active observer overlook ! How much is reserved for after-efforts ! 
A recognition of the activity of the mind in perception is alto- 
gether essential to a right conception of the nature and con- 
ditions of acts of memory and imagination. The mind can re- 
create by the representative power only what it has first created 
by the power of perception. The memory and imagination can 
recall and reshape no more of the objects of sense than the per- 
ceptive power has shaped and fixed and carried away for the 
Bervice of both. The acquisitions of the memory and the reach 
of the imagination do not depend so much upon the number 
of objects which we have perceived, as upon the manner in 
which we have perceived them. 



§ 123. ACTIVITY OF THE SOUL IN SENSE-PERCEPTION. 183 

Fourth : The activity of the mind in sense-perception is re- 
quired in early life to separate the mass of perceived or perceiv- 
able material into the distinct objects which are apprehended 
and named by men of average intelligence. 

We have already seen that the work of thus uniting different 
percepts into distinguishable wholes is performed to a great ex- 
tent before the time when we can distinctly remember. To the 
infant's eye the whole world of perceivable matter, so far as it is 
perceived at all, is perceived as a single whole, or one undivided 
object. The apartment within which it tries its first experiments 
of activity is literally a universe; the walls, the ceiling, the 
table, the chairs, all blending together in a total impression. 
This whole is divided into parts by successive efforts. One mind 
does this with greater perfection than another. Its discrimina- 
tions are more subtle, its combinations more exact, and its inter- 
pretations more sagacious, even upon such objects as apples, 
oranges, chairs, tables, horses, and dogs. 

Fifth : The activity of the mind is conspicuous in the diversity 
of the sense-perceptions which are reached by different men as 
they advance in life, or differ in their employments and culture. 

A single general example may illustrate the diversity of per- 
ception in which all these conditions exert their influence. Let two 
men together inspect a complicated machine or engine ; let the 
one be a person of average knowledge and experience, and the 
other an accomplished engineer : how much more wiU the one 
perceive in the engine than the other! Before the practiced eye, 
each separate part takes its appropriate place, being sharply 
distinguished from every other, the dividing surfaces and con- 
necting members being all discerned at a glance, and all these 
separate portions being united into a complete and symmetrical 
whole. To the eye of the uninstructed person, however keen 
may be his physical vision, there is neither whole nor parts, but 
a confused and bewildering impression. The difference cannot 
be accounted for by any physical defect or excellence in the 
organs of vision, but only by the previous intellectual training. 

These intellectual conditions are the result of the mind's own 
energy, and that they are most significant is convincingly 
demonstrated by a multitude of similar cases. The sharp but 
uninstructed eye of the child or the savage looks out listlessly 



186 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 123. 

upon the stars ; the reflecting eye of the astronomer groups them 
in figures, threads them upon lines, and arrays them in mystical 
curves. The mechanic perceives much that every other man 
overlooks, and the objects which each mechanic perceives, or, as 
we say, has an eye for, depend on the particular trade to which 
he has been trained. It is true that in such cases, some activity of 
phantasy and memory attends and often precedes the special 
activity of sense. But if the memory and the phantasy are first 
aroused, their action determines and decides what is perceived 
by the senses ; it directs and holds the attention to their appro- 
priate objects, and so enables the mind to master and retain them 
as permanent possessions. 

It follows from these truths, by a necessary inference, that the 
mind's activity in perception, and its mastery over a greater or 
smaller number of objects, must depend very largely upon the 
interest which these objects excite. In other words, the feelings 
and the character affect the accuracy and the reach, and of 
course the permanence of the sense-perceptions. 

The eye that is sharpened by the lust of gain, detects objects 
and qualities to which the less interested observer is totally 
blind. The ear that is quickened by expectation or terror can 
catch the sound of deliverance when all other ears are deaf. 
The hand that palpitates with hope or fear, can apprehend 
delicate monitions of good or evil, which the stranger would not 
notice. The living soul,, as intellect, sensibility, and will, is 
present in the acts of every sense, and largely determines the 
report which each shall make of the material universe. What 
a man is, is exemplified in what he perceives, — his tastes, his 
desires, and even his moral habits and resolves. 

The activity of sense-perception, though an activity 

Is elementary, J , / i /• n 

and easily ex- of knowledge, is however the most elementary ot ail 
these activities, and the one which is most easily 
performed. In one aspect it is the lowest in the scale in respect 
to its dignity and disciplinary value. It is the least intellectual 
of all the intellectual acts. It is performed with great ease and 
with surprising perfection by the infant. All the manifold 
processes of combination and judgment which it involves are 
executed with the greatest rapidity, at the very earliest age, and 
by persons of the least cultivation in the higher discriminations 



§ 124. ACTIVITY OF THE SOUL IN SENSE-PERCEPTION. 187 

of the intellect, and apparently of the very lowest capacity fot 
such cultivation. The habits and aptitudes which are the results 
of these efforts seem to be more completely controlled by asso- 
ciation, to displace and almost to defy reflection, more entirely 
than is true of the higher activities and applications of the 
intellect. That some activities and processes of the intellect 
are capable of being more readily performed than others, is an 
original fact of our being. It can only be accepted as a psy- 
chological fact, which, to our knowledge is ultimate and inex- 
plicable. But though this fact cannot be resolved by any higher 
or more comprehensive psychical or physical law, it is readily 
explained by the still higher relations of adaptation and design. 

SENSE-PERCEPTION : SUMMARY AND REVIEW. 

$ 124. (1.) The processes involved in sense-perception, as our analysis has shown, 
are by no means simple. The product, when complete in a perceived material 
object, is in its constituent elements and relations more complex than is usually 
believed. 

We will briefly review and recapitulate the several steps of the processes and 
the elements of the product. 

(2.) Sense-perception is an act of knowledge by means of sensations and the 
sense-organs. As the term indicates, the act implies two elements, which are 
distinguished as sensation and perception; more exactly as sensation -proper and 
perception-proper. These are distinguished in thought, but not separable in 
fact. The act of consciousness by which we know the process, separates these 
elements by an analysis of thought, but connects them by a synthesis of time re- 
lations, as constituting a single and instantaneous psychical state. They 
are distinguished in the relation of dependence, but are united as instantaneous 
in time. 

(3.) Sensation, or the sensation element, is known still further : First, physiolo- 
gically, as dependent on the excitement of the sensorium, in whole or in part, 
by some physical excitant or object. The sensorium is a collective term for the 
nervous organism and the sense-organs conjoined. This organism, animated 
by the sentient soul, acts as the agent or instrument of the several sensations^ 
How it is fitted thus to act, we do not know. What there is in its nature which 
renders it capable of responding, as it does, to the impressions or excitements 
which it suffers, we cannot explain. We know that each class or portion of the 
sentient nerves is capable of a special sensation, and so far is idiopathic. In 
order to produce it, the excitement or impression must usually be applied to the 
nerve-endings, in the sense-organs. A class of exceptions to this rule is found 
in the effect upon the nervous filaments, of electric and chemical action, of pres- 
sure, of certain morbid and abnormal bodily conditions, which occasion what are. 
called the subjective sensations of light and sound, and perhaps of taste, 

(4.) Second, psychologically considered, sensation is a more or less positively 
pleasant or painful experience )f the soul, as consciously Animating and acting 



188 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §124. 

with an extended sensorium. The sensations are in this respect sharply distin- 
guished by the soul itself from the desires which attend them as well as from th« 
purely spiritual emotions. When the soul is said to be conscious of its sensations, 
consciousness can not be used in the technical sense of a direct cognizance of 
purely spiritual acts or states, but as a direct or intuitive cognizance of this pecu- 
liar experience. It follows that the several sensations, inasmuch as they are ex- 
perienced by the soul as connected with the extended sensorium, must be in 
definitely but really separated from each other in distance and place. 

(5.) Perception, as an act of the mind, is subjective and objective ; as subjective 
it is distinguished by several steps or processes. As oljcctivc, it apprehends some 
being. The result is a product, or the object as known. 

Subjectively viewed, sense-perception is distinguished as original and acquired, 
or simple and complex; also as direct and indirect. In original or simple percep- 
tion, the mind knows the single percepts which are appropriate to single organs 
of sense. In acquired or complex perception, it connects tbcse with one another 
under a variety of relations. In direct perception, the relations used are those of 
extension and diversity; in indirect, those of likeness, causation, and design aro 
also employed. 

Objectively viewed, perception always knows a material non-ego. But the ob- 
jects of simple and complex perception are unlike. 

(6.) In simple or original perception, the object is a simple percept — i. c., an ex- 
tended non-ego. But the term non-ego is equivocal, being capable of three dis- 
tinct meanings, corresponding to the three distinguishable egos with which they 
are contrasted. These are the following: (].) The perceiving agent as a pure 
spirit; (2.) the percipient agent as a spirit animating an extended sensorium; 
(3.) the individual as spirit, sensorium, and body. The three non-ejos contrasted 
with these are : (1.) The sensorium in excited action, distinguished by the soul 
from itself as a pure spirit; (2.) the body perceived as other than the sentient 
soul — i. e., the soul as animating the sensorium j and (3.) the surrounding universe 
as distinguished from the soul, sensorium, and body — i. e., from the man as soul 
and body united. 

(7.) In original perception, the object directly apprehended is the sensorium as 
excited to some definite action. This is distinguished from the soul as percipient, 
by the soul's own act of discrimination. In other words, the ego and non-ego 
contrasted are the first named above. This non-ego is the percept appropriate to 
each of the sense organs. 

Some contend that there are but two organs and two forms of direct perception 
■ — those of touch and sight ; the senses of taste, smell, and hearing, giving sensa- 
tions only. 

(8.) Indirect or acquired perception first combines single percepts into material 
wholes or objects, by referring them to the same portion of space. The first expe- 
riment is made with the body itself, the perception of which the soul completes, 
knowing it within and without. This gives the non-ego in the second sense. 
Other percepts it proceeds to combine and construct into other bodies, by pro- 
cesses of comparison, measurement, and induction, after the analogon of the body 
which the soul inhabits. These are distinguished from the body itself, giving 
the non-ego in the third sense, the distances, forms, sizes, etc., being assign cu 
\ y the various processes »f judgment, which arc usually called acts of acquired 
perception, 



§ 125. THEORIES OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 189 

(9.) Later still, the intellect knows the percepts thus united as substance and 
attribute, when it connects the objects with the sensations which they excite undel- 
the relation of causality, or compares one object with another under the relations 
of form and dimension. To do the one, tho material object must be contrasted 
with the sentient sjuI, by an act of reflexive comparison, both being projected into 
the mind's field of view. To do the other, motion, measurement, and analysis 
are required to separate length, breadth, size, and form, from the things to which 
they pertain. Recognition, generalization, and other acts of the higher intelli 
genoe greatly stimulate and aid this activity, but are not essential to it. Many, 
:iot to say all, of these acts of acquired or indirect perception are acts of natural 
and unconscious induction, which, like other such acts, must assume in the objects 
known adaptation to the mind that knows them; in other words must assume de- 
sign and order in the universe. 

"When the material object is known in these elements and relations as a pro- 
duct familiar to the mind, the process of sense-perception is complete. 

(10.) When, moreover, consciousness is so matured as to distinguish the soul's 
spiritual acts and emotions from its sensations and their objects, then the non-ego 
is distinguished from the ego in the first sense required, and all the relations of 
matter to the spirit, which are objects of common observation, are attained and 
made familiar to the intellect. 

(11.) In the processes of sense-perception the state of the intellect is active, and 
active only. It is a form of that knowledge, by which beings and relations are 
cognized as real. This activity is intimately allied to the higher processes of 
which it is the essential condition, and like them is directed by the emotions and 
the will, which together with the intellect make up the endowments of the con- 
scious soul. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THEORIES OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 

£ 125. All philosophers have undertaken to give some theory or Interest of the 
explanation of the perceptions of sense. These perceptions are Sj 6 ? 11 ^? t and 
among the most striking and interesting of all phenomena, and 
would naturally attract the attention of all inquisitive minds. They vary in 
uniformity with the changing condition of the bodily organs, and of the objects 
and media with which these organs are concerned. For this reason, men of phil- 
osophic tastes would be prompted to devise some theory to explain how and why 
these perceptions so often change. 

It is not strange that these explanations have usually been derived from the 
generally received opinions or philosophical theories concerning the forces and 
laws of nature, and the powers and laws of the human soul. As the sciences of 
nature and of the soul have been continually changing, one theory of sense-per- 
ception has given place to another. 

On the other hand, erroneous theories of sense-perception have, by a reflex in- 
fluence, affected to a very large extent the philosophy of the soul. The condi . 
cions and laws of sense-perception would readily be taken as the types of all the 



190 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §126. 

intellectual processes. Whatever theory was t adopted in respect to the nature of 
sight, and hearing, would be extended to memory and the imagination. It is not 
surprising, therefore, that these theories have exerted so powerful an influence 
upon psychology and speculative philosophy. 

Theories of sense-perception are especially liable to be erroneous, from the cir- 
cumstance that they involve so many elements. The processes are themselves 
most complicated, involving, as they do, corporeal and psychical agencies. In 
order fully to understand the processes of sense-perception, we must know their 
conditions or media; this involves a correct, if not a complete, knowledge of such 
agents as light and sound. A grossly erroneous theory of either might vitiate 
our theory of the psychological processes of sight and hearing. The scientific 
knowledge of these agents and their laws includes assumptions both mathe- 
matical and metaphysical, which may be correct and complete, or erroneous and de- 
fective. 

The instruments of sense-perception are the bodily organs ; and to understand 
these organs we must not only have a correct theory of the living organism, but 
also of its relations to the rational soul. The psychical element in perception is 
also complex. The consideration of perception as a special act or kind of know- 
ledge, requires some just views of knowledge in general. A serious error in re- 
spect to this fundamental point would, by a logical necessity, involve mistake or 
defect in respect to knowledge by perception. The element of feeling is also pre- 
sent in sense-perception in what is called bodily sensibility, the correct theory of 
which involves just views of the nature of feeling in general, and of the relation 
of feeling to knowledge. Of the various theories of sense-perception which are 
so prominent in the history of philosophy, the errors and defects are to be traced 
to some false assumption or oversight in physics, physiology, or metaphysics, or 
in all these sciences combined. 

Theories of sense-perception are, to a great extent, theories of vision. This 
is not surprising. The phenomena of vision are the most prominent in our expe- 
rience, and the most attractive to our attention. The organs of vision arc more 
complicated than those of any other sense, and at the same time more easily 
separated into their component parts. As might be expected, the theories of 
sense-perception which are recorded in the history of philosophy, are, for tho 
most part, theories of vision, and the illustrations and examples of the power of 
sense-perception, its actings and its laws, are almost universally drawn from the 
power of seeing with the eye. 

$ 126. We begin with the theories of the earlier Greek philoso- 

The early phers. In these there is very little to interest or instruct us, ex- 
Greek philoso- r J 
pliers. cept as they serve to illustrate the causes of error, and to show us 

the beginnings and germs of almost every one of the false theories 
which deform and mislead modern speculation. They aro all alike, in not sharply 
distinguishing the soul from tho body, and scarcely from inorganic matter, in re- 
spect either of essence or functions. The first effort of philosophy was to resolvo 
all agents and all phenomena — beginning with those most obviously material and 
mechanical, and terminating with the most spiritual and free — into some singla 
element, as original and all-pervading. 

Empedoclc8 of Agrigentum introduced the distinction between sensuous and 
ili vino knowledge — teaching that the impressions of sense must bo corrected l>v 
tho notions of reason. It was an axiom with him in explaining sensuous know- 



§ 126. THEORIES OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 191 

ledge, that like can only be known by its like, — this assumption pervades the 
great majority of the theories of perception down to the present moment ; and, 
as we have seen, it is with the greatest difficulty that the mind can rid itself of 
its influence. (Cf. Hamilton, Works of Reid, p. 300, note.) In conformity with 
this view, he seeks to show that sense-perception can only be explained by our 
knowledge of the composition of the body perceived, and of the forces which act 
upon it. The objects of sense send off certain effluxes, anoppwu, from their sur- 
face, which pass into the human body through pores [provided in the several 
organs]. 

Democrilus was the first avowed materialist; resolving all the different kinds of 
being, with their phenomena, into combinations of atoms, differing in size and 
shape. He taught that the soul differs from the body, by being composed of finer 
particles. All sense-perceptions are occasioned by contact. In modern phrase, 
he resolved all the senses into the sense of touch. That which is brought into con- 
tact with the soul is not, however, the material object; but its et&uA.oi>, or image, 
being detached from its surface, reaches the soul by passing through the pores 
of an organ of sense. The el8ia\ov and the airoppo-q were nearly the same, unless 
the anoppor) was used to emphasize the material element, and the eldia\oy that 
which is subjective and spiritual. The nature and signification of either do not 
seem to have been held with greater intelligence and precision in earlier times 
than the corresponding terms [as image, representation, species] and conceptions 
are employed and understood in modern philosophy. At one time they were 
used in a signification simply and grossly material; at another, as the product 
of the combined activity of the spiritual and material. (Cf. Ritter, vol. i. B. vi. 
c. ii,, note.) 

From Democritus, Epicurus borrowed the notion of effluxes, simulacra rerum, 
which he conceived in the grossest form — viz., that they " are like pellicles flying 
off from objects; and that these material likenesses, diffusing themselves every- 
where " in the air, are propagated to the perceptive organs. In the words of 
Lucretius : " Quse, quasi membranse, summo de corpore rerum Dereptse volitant ultro 
citroque per auras." 

The philosophers of the Socratic school [Plato and Aristotle] recognized the 
doctrines of their predecessors to some extent, either to expand or refute them. 
They also made important additions to the philosophy of the previous times in 
respect to the theory of sense-perception. The doctrines of Aristotle and Plato, 
and even the terms which they employed, can be traced among philosophers of 
every age since their time ; and they still reappear and exert their influence 
among the most recent schools.. Aristotle especially gave the law to the school- 
men, from whose teachings the modern theories have retained many traditions, 
Plato is still appealed to and quoted by his admirers for his eloquent and just 
psychological discriminations, even in respect to the theory of sense-perception 

Plato taught very distinctly and emphatically, especially in his Theatetus, that 
sensation [proper] is an effect jointly produced by the force, motion, or action 
(<|>opa) of the material object and the sentient agent, and that it varies, of course, 
with this joint activity; that the sensations of no two sentient beings need ne- 
cessarily be the same, under the same material conditions at the same time ; and 
that the sensations of the same being, from the same object at different times, 
need not be the same, but may vary very greatly. Sense-knowledge, alo-Oyo-i';. 
is therefore untrustworthy, illusive, and, it may be, deceptive. With this he oon- 



192 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 126 

trasts the higher kind of knowledge, v eirLo-rrjfxri, viz., that which is rational and 
intellectual — the knowledge of ideas, or of objects in their ideas. This know- 
ledge, in its subjective character, is certain and satisfactory ; in its objects it is 
permanent and fixed. 

We find in Aristotle also the beginnings of the attempt to con- 
Aristotle, sider apart and to distinguish the intellectual act of perceiving 
en the one hand, and the physical conditions or media by which 
objects are actually perceived. 

In respect to vision, Aristotle made a great advance upon his predecessors, in 
teaching that visible objects do not act directly upon the eye of the percipient, 
but through a transparent agent or medium. He also taught a doctrine of the 
refraction of light. Of this refraction the transparent medium spoken of is sus- 
ceptible when it appears as water and air. In respect to the construction of the 
eye, he made little advance upon his predecessors, and knew little or nothing of 
the discoveries made by modern anatomy and physiology. The other senses 
require a medium as truly as does vision. The medium is in every case set in 
motion or brought into action by the perceived object, and is thus made capable 
of acting upon the appropriate sense. In respect to the construction and offices 
of the remaining organs of sense, Aristotle taught little that is worth . eciting. 
All perceivable objects are extended, but their essence, as perceivable, does not 
consist in their being extended, but in a certain relation or proportion which they 
bear to the percipient. 

In respect to the intellectual element in sense-perception, the element which 
we have called the discernment of relations, Aristotle is not clear and explicit. 
Now, he asserts that in perception, neither truth nor error are possible, but that 
these can only pertain to the higher powers of the soul. Again, he calls the 
power a judging faculty. The phenomena and products of sense-perception, he 
shows most clearly, have an element which does not pertain to the purely and 
properly intellectual powers ; but he does not explain the higher element which 
both have in common. In this he gave the example for the confusion and defect 
of clearness which have prevailed from his day to the present. 

He held however that there is a common percipient or sensory, by which the 
several sensations are measured, judged, and united together. Each separate 
sense apprehends its own object, as the eye color, and the ear sound ; and each 
apprehends or discerns this object correctly. That which is common to all objects 
are these five : motion, rest, number, size, and form. The seat of this common 
sensory or common percipient, is the heart. This power combines and separates 
the percepts appropriate to the several senses, and prepares them, so to speak, 
for the phantasy and the memory, both of which are activities of the common 
percipient. 

The doctrine that objects are not themselves perceived, but their species or 
perceptible forms, was sanctioned by Aristotle. As the wax receives only the im- 
pression or image from the device on a seal-ring, and not its matter, it making 
no difference whether the ring is gold or iron, such is perception by each of the 
senses. What is received, is not the matter of the object perceived, but that 
which it effects in conjunction with or in relation to the percipient. This is its 
form— to elfios, species. What was intended by this form, was variously inter- 
preted by the Greek commentators, Simplicius and Themistius contending that 
the percipient is the bodily organ, which received a corporeal impression; am 



§ 128. THEORIES OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 193 

Alexander Aphrodisiensis and John Philiponus that it was a mental power, 
which, by perceiving, gained a mental impression or form. The last were doubt- 
less in the right. (Cf. Hamilton's very valuable Notes, Works of Beid, pp. 827, 
881; Metaphysics, Lee. xxi. vol. ii. pp. 36, 37, 38; Am. ed., pp. 292, 293.) 

The distinction between matter and form, or species, was transmitted through 
the successors of Aristotle to the schools of the Middle Ages, and became an 
hereditary text for controversies and discussions, not only in respect to the na- 
ture and validity of the sense-perceptions, but of the objects and processes of our 
higher knowledge. These controversies have not yet terminated, nor have the 
terms over which they were fought been wholly laid aside. 

$ 127. The most of the Schoolmen retained in substance the dis- 
tinctions and the doctrines of Aristotle, making such advances The schoolmen. 
upon them as were to be expected from active disputants and well of species, 
trained dialecticians, who employed their energies almost exclu- 
sively in defining more precisely what they supposed their great master intended, 
or in devising new inferences from the materials and data which he furnished. 
Tbe schoolmen were not exclusively the followers of Aristotle. They were in- 
fluenced more or less by the doctrines and the terminology of Plato. 

Tbe doctrine of the necessity and agency of species in sense-perception was 
prominent in their theories, and their views may be summed up in the following 
propositions : Objects are not and cannot be directly and immediately perceived, 
but only their species* The reasons given were the following : The object often 
is plainly not in contact with the sentient organ. It is also in its nature unlike 
the sensitive soul, and therefore cannot affect it. Every thing known must be in 
the knowing agent; but it is impossible that this should be true of the object; 
it can only be true of its species. Experience, also, proves that the image or 
species only is perceived. When a stick is thrust into the water, it iVseen to bo 
bent or broken. A change in the medium changes the object perceived. Our 
perceptions of the same object also vary at different times. 

But the species is not a material entity or efflux. At least, it was not so regarded 
by the more intelligent of the schoolmen. It was scarcely possible, however, 
that it should not be treated as a material entity, and so have prepared the way 
for the grosser doctrine of an intermediate representative image. The species 
is not perceived, but only the object, through or by means of the species. And 
yet the species so far forth represents the object, that when it acts upon the 
organ of sense, it moves or excites the percipient to discern, by its means, the 
object itself. Some of the schoolmen taught that these species have some spatial 
relations — that they exist in every part of space, bridging over, by a continuous 
series the interval between, or binding together, the object and the sentient. 

A few among the schoolmen rejected the doctrine of sensible and of intelligi- 
ble species. Among the most conspicuous was "William of Occam, who was led, 
by the boldness with which he urged the doctrines of the Nominalists, to reject 
also the doctrine of sensible species. 

$ 128. Descartes, made a permanent inroad upon the philosophy 
of the scholastics, and introduced the modern science of psy- Descartes 
chology. He prepared the way for the distinctions and discu»- Malcbranche, 
sions in respect to sense-perception which have played so im- 
portant a part in modern speculation. The doctrines of Descartes 
which we no 1 to notice are the following : 





194 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 128. 

1. Descartes drew a sharply-defined line between spirit and matter in respect 
to both essence and phenomena, and of course distinguished clearly between the 
soul and the body. 

2. All the affections of the body, being phenomena of matter (of which the 
essence is extension), must be resolved into positions and motions of its parts 
in space. Hence all those changes in the organs of sense by which we perceive 
must be changes in the relative positions of their constituent parts. 

3. The medium by which they are conveyed to the brain was held to be the 
animal spirits. These serve as the instrument of sensation, by producing in the 
brain [conveying] changes corresponding to those occasioned in the organs of 
sense by the action of the object perceived. 

But the soul does not, by a second or internal sense-perception, apprehend the 
last of these series of mechanical changes wrought in the brain, as though the 
soul were endowed with another interior apparatus of sense. How it becomes 
aware of these changes in the brain is not explained by Descartes ; nor how, 
when these changes are made known to it, these serve as indications or signs of 
qualities in material objects. Descartes never asserted, as did some of his dis- 
ciples, that these changes can act as representative ideas — that in vision, the 
image on the retina, or its rcilex on the brain, appears as a copy or reflected pic- 
ture, which is compared with the object itself. On the other hand, he held to 
the doctrine of a representative idea, in the sense that, on occasion of the ap- 
prehension of these changes, the mind has sense-perception of objects. As the 
schoolmen held that by or through the several species, the soul perceives objects, 
so he held that through or on occasion of these mechanical changes, excited and 
propagated through the corporeal machine, the soul apprehends the objects of 
which these are the indications or signs. 

We see one object with two eyes, just as we touch one object with two sticks; the 
similar apprehended motions in the brain, (corresponding to the double muscu- 
lar sensations with which we hold the two sticks), make the two sticks feel one 
object. But it is not explained how the soul is capable of knowing the last 
movements of the machine, or how it interprets the index in the brain. It is true, 
Descartes supposed the seat of the soul to be a small gland in the midst of a 
small cavity at the centre of the brain. To the plexus of tubes and interstices 
which constitute the walls of this cavity, the animal spirits bring the last changes 
which correspond to each sense-perception of material objects, and by means of 
the changes effected in these walls they transmit the orders of the soul. 

4. All sensations are purely spiritual affections, being, in his language, " modes 
of thinking," or of thought, which, in its nature, has no relation whatever to 
extension. The sensation of pain which we refer to the foot, is simply in the 
mind. The sensation of color which we refer to an external object, is in the mind 
only ; it is neither in the eye nor in the picture to which we ascribe it. 

5. The soul, in its sensations, is purely and simply passive ; even in its in- 
clinations and desires, which are functions of the will, it is passive. 

6. The diversity in the qualities of the sensations is owing to the diverse mo 
tions of the bodies which occasion them. 

7. Material objects are known as external to the soul by the following process : 
The soul finds itself affected with certain sensations, or modes of thought. They 
aro known not to be caused by tho soul's own agency. Under the axiom that 



§ 129. THEORIES OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 195 

every phenomenon must be referred to a cause, the mind believes in the existence 
of material objects as the external causes of its own sensations. 

8. "We confide in the indications of the senses, because we believe that God is 
too good a being to allow us to be deceived, or to bring objects before our senses 
in such a way as to make deception possible. That God is good, we know with 
innate certainty. Hence we confide in the truth that the ideas of sense cor- 
respond to the reality of things. 

Malebranche developed a complete theory of sense-perception with far 
greater distinctness and detail than any of his predecessors, and did more to 
give direction and form to the modern theories than even Locke himself. The 
distinctions which he introduced are the following : 

1. He distinguished, in sense-perception, the element of sensation from the 
element of judgment. Of the four different elements (which he says occur in 
almost every sensation, and are confounded by most persons, but which it is most 
important to distinguish) the third and fourth are the following : the sensation, 
or subjective state of the soul, as of warmth; and the judgment which the soul 
makes that this warmth is in the hand or in the fire. " This judgment is 
natural, or rather, it is only a compound or complex sensation " — " ou plutot ce 
n'est qu'une sensation composie." This natural judgment is usually followed by 
another (t. e. an acquired) judgment which the soul, through the force of habit, 
makes with the utmost rapidity. 

2. Malebranche accepts the doctrine, that it is only through ideas that we can 
apprehend material objects, and thereby denies that we can know such objects as 
they are. He gives various reasons to show that these intermediate ideas are ne- 
cessary. They are mostly drawn from the phenomena of vision. While he rejects 
the doctrine of species and effluxes, and every form of material representation, he 
as earnestly supports the doctrine of immaterial representatives, and holds that 
these are changing, uncertain, deceitful, and confused, when contrasted with the 
pure ideas which are attained in God. His favorite and peculiar doctrine was 
that "the soul sees all things in God." 

Antony Arnaidd maintained the following positions against Malebranche : 

1. It is a false assumption that the soul cannot perceive except by means of re- 
presentative ideas. What the soul perceives, is not the idea as distinguished from, 
and representative of, the material object, but it is the object itself. The idea is 
nothing else than the perception itself. To say that the soul has an idea, is tho 
same as to say that the soul has a perception. 

2. The soul, to perceive a material object, does not need to come into contact 
with the object perceived. 

3. The soul is not passive in perception, but active. It is endowed directly by 
the Creator with the power to perceive. 

4. We must be able to perceive material objects directly. Otherwise, we should 
not know that the representative ideas represent them. 

§ 129. The speculations of Locke have exerted a powerful influ- 
ence upon the course of modern philosophy, and incidentally upon JollQ Locke, 
the theories of sense-perception. 

His opinions, in respect to sense-perception, may be divided as follows : 

1. Of the media or physical conditions of sense- perception he teaches little 
that is positive, and nothing that was new. 

2. Of the faculty, he says only that it is a distinct source of knowledge, and 



196 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 129. 

&iat from this we derive all that we know of material qualities — !. c, of the sepa- 
rable elements given by each of the senses. 

3. The objects apprehended by the faculty of sense are the qualities of matter. 
Of these there are two classes : the primary and the secondary. The primary are 
solidity, extension, figure, motion, rest, and number. The secondary are the so- 
called sensible qualities, as color, taste, smell, etc. The last are the capacities in 
material objects to produce certain impressions or affections of the soul by varia- 
tions in the size, figure, position, and motions of the primary qualities. 

These two classes of qualities make up all that we know of material 
objects, after we have added to them the "obscure idea" of substance, as that in 
which they inhere. 

4. What knowledge is, or what it is for the mind to know, Locke teaches by the 
following definition : 

" The mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the 
Ideas it has of them. Our knowledge, therefore, is real only so far as there is & 
conformity between our ideas and the reality of things" (Essay, B. iv. c. iv. $ 3). 

Of the relation of these "ideas" to their correspondent qualities or objects, he 
says : " The ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, and 
their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves ; but the ideas produced in 
us by their secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all." He ex- 
pressly defines knowledge of every kind to be the discernment of an agreement or 
disagreement between two entities; in the case of sense-knowledge, between the 
representative idea and its counterpart. 

The language of Locke in these passages, if strictly construed, would seem to 
declare that it is by the intervention of representative ideas that we perceive sen- 
sible objects, and that we can only know them so far as we discern that they "re- 
semble " or " agree with " their objects. Hence it has been charged upon him that 
he taught the doctrine of perception by means of intervening images or ideas. It 
becomes a question of great interest therefore, what he actually intended by 
this careless and confused language. It is obvious that any such theory of know- 
ledge, when applied to sense-perception, would involve a positive self-contradic- 
tion, or else an idle and useless expedient. If we can only know a material ob- 
ject by means of the intervening idea, which "represents" or agrees with it, 
then we can never reach or know the object at all; for we may go on by a succes- 
sion of processes ad infinitum, and, when we have done, we shall only have 
reached a representative idea, but shall never have grasped the object itself. On 
the other hand, if it be conceded that we can and do perceive material objects 
and, in perceiving them, discern that the idea is " conformed to," " agrees with ' 
or " represents," its object, then we must be able to compare the two together— 
the matorial object and its idea. But in order to be able to compare the object 
with its idea, we must know 1he two terms which wp compare — i. e., the object 
itself as well as the idea. But if we know the object already, of what use is it, 
or how is it possible, to acquire knowledge of it by the idea? This would make 
it impossible to know the secondary qualities by any means whatever, for Locke 
expressly asserts that no similarity exists between the ideas of secondary qualities 
and the qualities themselves— as the smell, etc., of the violet, and the qualities in 
objects which produce thorn. 

These consequences, so fatal to the representative theory, supposing Locke to hav« 
held it, would lead us to question whether he intended by " idea," in every or in any 



§ 130. THEORIES OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 197 

case, an intervening representative image ; and by the words " to resemble," " to bo 
conformed to," " to agree with," any relation discerned by the process of comparison. 

But whatever doubt there may be in respect to the doctrines which Locke ac- 
tually taught in respect to perception, there can be no question at all in respect- 
to the construction which other writers gave them, or to the inferences which they 
derived from the principles which they imputed to Locke. (Cf. $ 145.) 

£ 130. George Berkeley ( Principles of Human Knowledge, § 18 
sqq.), assuming that ideas only are the direct objects of the mind's Bishop George- 
knowledge in sense-perception, concludes that it is impossible that DavidHume. 
the mind should know that the material or external world exists 
at all. It is impossible that the mind should know the objects which the ideas 
are said to resemble. For, in the first place, one idea can only be like an idea, 
and can never be like an object; and second, if the idea was like the object, we 
could never know this likeness except by knowing both the idea and its object. 
All that the mind can know are its own sensations or modifications. The distinc- 
tion between primary and secondary qualities is not well-founded. All we know 
is that on occasion of the ideas of extension, motion, and figure, we have the sen- 
sations of color, taste, and sound. Ideas exist only so far as they are perceived. 
The laws which we conceive to govern material things, only govern the combina- 
tions of our ideas. Real objects, as we call them, are only combinations of ideas; 
tbe only difference between them and the so-called imaginary ideas consists entirely 
in this, that the first are not dependent on our will to produce them, but are al- 
ways present to our minds, whether we will or no. Imaginary ideas, on the other 
hand, come and go according as we will. Real ideas are also more lively and 
distinct, while those of the imagination are faint and confused. The knowledge 
of spirit is strikingly contrasted with that which we have of matter. TTe know 
ourselves and our own states or modifications directly. We know our 
thoughts, feelings, etc., not their ideas. That the universe is permanent in its 
objects — viz., ideas — and also in its laws, is to be explained by the fact, that the 
Eternal Spirit constantly sustains and presents these ideas for the contemplation 
of created spirits. By means of these, the attributes and government of God are 
made known. All the things that we perceive, are the ideas of God. 

Berkeley's Exsay toward a New Theory of Vision, 1709, was the most important 
contribution which he made to the theory of sense-perception. This was fol- 
lowed by The Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained, 1733. In these essays 
Berkeley gave greater precision and fullness to the doctrine of the acquired per- 
ceptions. The fact that some of our perceptions are acquired was familiarly 
known and generally accepted before the time of Berkeley. It was generally 
held, however, that the acquired judgments were formed by means of the pro- 
perties of light, as taught in the science of optics. This doctrine Berkeley sets 
aside, and clearly establishes the truth that it is by sensations attending the varied 
Use of the eyes, by the confusion and clearness of the vision, etc., etc., that these 
judgments of distance and magnitude are formed, and that these judgments are 
wholly matters of experience concerning the ordinary course of nature. 

David Hwne was not content to apply the ideal theory to the world of matter, 
i at he maintained that it was as true of the world of spirits, rejecting the dis- 
tinction made in favor of the latter by Berkeley, and urging that we know nothing 
of the mind except only the ideas which we experience, thus resolving all real 
existences into mere collections of ideas. 



198 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 131. 

g 131. Dr. Thomas Reid, the father of the so-called Scottish 
id «/ t" philosophy, being startled by the consequences which Berkeley 
Dr. T. Brown, and Hume derived from their construction of Locke's theory 
of sense-perception, was led to review not only the doctrine of re- 
presentative perception, but also some other principles which Locke was 
understood to advocate in respect to the origin and elements of knowledge. The 
features of his system are as follows;: 

1. He successfully exposed the groundlessness, inconsistency, and contradictions 
of the ancient and modern theories of representative perception, and cleared the 
way for a theory more accordant with experience and common sense. 

2. Reid vindicated the general principle, that no theory of perception is enti- 
tled to confidence as truly philosophical, which contradicts the universal convic- 
tions and the common sense of mankind, when they apply their understandings 
to the judgment of truths which they are competent to decide upon. This was a 
special inference from the general axioms of Reid's philosophy. 

3. Reid insisted that the mind is active in sense-perception « and did this with 
an earnestness rare among philosophers, not only of the English, but of any 
school whatever. The ancients, and the moderns before him, did indeed assert 
that the mind is active in its higher functions ; but they as distinctly denied that 
it is active in the lower. It has been nearly the uniform doctrine of all the 
schools that, in sense-perception, objects act upon the mind so as to impress 
ideas, and that, in the reception of these ideas, the mind is chiefly or wholly 
passive. Against this doctrine Reid occasionally protests, in language like the 
following : " An object, in being perceived, does not act at all. I perceive the 
walls of the room where I sit : but they are perfectly inactive, and therefore act 
not upon the mind. To be perceived is what logicians call an external denomina- 
tion, which implies neither action nor quality in the object perceived. Nor could 
men have ever gone into this notion that perception is owing to some action of 
the object upon the mind, were it not that we are so prone to form our notions 
of the mind from some similitude we conceive between it and body." 

4. As intimately connected with the preceding, Reid asserts that the faculty 
and act of judgment are present in connection with the perceptions of sense. 

5. Reid recognized and enforced the distinction between sensation and percep- 
tion; and thus prepared the way for the correct and complete determination of 
these two elements in the process of sense-perception. 

Dug aid Stewart, the successor of Reid in the school of Scotch philosophers, 
followed closely and almost timidly in the footsteps of his predecessor, whom he 
greatly admired and revered. 

1. He discriminated more carefully between sensation and perception than 
Reid. He limited perception to the act of apprehending the objects appropriate 
to each separate sense, and escaped the confusion and ambiguity which Reid 
committed, of confounding the original with the acquired perceptions. 

Of three of the senses — smell, taste, and hearing— he denied perception alto- 
gether, in fact though not in form. He expressly asserted that these, by them- 
selves, give no information of external objects (Outlines of Moral Philosophy, \ 
15). He asserts that the sensation of color, even as given in vision, can reside 
in the mind only, and is purely subjective; giving no relation of extension, and 
in our early experience clearly separable from it. 

2. Stewart apprehended, far more dearly than Reid, the true character of what 



§132. "theories of sense-perception. 199 

he calls the mathematical affections of matter, and the relation of these affections 
to space and to our belief in space as a necessary existence. These mathemati- 
cal affections are extension and figure, and are distinguished from the other 
primary qualities, such as hardness or solidity, and are thus characterized:—! 
They presuppose the existence of our external senses. 2. The notion of them 
involves an irresistible conviction of the external existence of their objects — viz., 
of space. 3. This conviction is neither the result of reasoning, nor of experi- 
ence, but must be considered as an ultimate and essential law of human thought. 
(Phil. Essays.) 

3. Stewart adds to the doctrine of Reid, that we believe in the existence of the 
material world, by a necessary suggestion. The explanation of our belief in its 
permanence, he finds in our more comprehensive belief in the permanence of the 
laws of nature. 

Dr. Thomas Brown followed in the same school with Reid and Stewart. The 
analysis which he has given of the processes and the products of the sense-per- 
ceptions, is one of the boldest and the most subtle which is to be found in the 
whole compass of English psychology. 

1. Dr. Brown attached great importance to the muscular sensations. He was 
one of the earliest of English psychologists to recognize and to distinguish them 
from the sensations as usually accepted. This distinction is now almost univer- 
sally adopted. Dr. Brown made so much of these sensations, as to derive from 
them the notions of extension and of externality. 

2. He scarcely recognizes £he distinction adopted by Reid between sensation 
and perception. So far as the original perceptions are concerned, he rejects it 
altogether. The only acts of perception which he acknowledges or describes are 
acts of acquired perception. 

He refers our belief in the external and material world to the principle of cau- 
sation. We know our sensations as subjective states of the soul. We believe 
that they must be produced by a cause. We know that they are not caused by 
ourselves. There must be causes other than ourselves. These causes are material 
non-egos. The existence of these non-egns is not suggested directly, as Reid 
teaches, but it is inferred. " Perception, then, even in that class of feelings by 
which we learn to consider ourselves as surrounded by substances extended and 
resisting, is only another name, as I have said, for the result of certain associa- 
tions and inferences that flow from other more general princip'es of the mind." 
(Lee. 26.) Cf. £ 40. 

3. It is equally clear that Brown, to be consistent, would reject nearly or alto- 
gether the distinction between the primary and the secondary qualities of matter 
as explained by Reid, and in part adopted by Stewart. 

g 132. Sir W. Hamilton, the deservedly eminent Professor of Logic 
and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburrgb, was one of the Ha^uto n m 
greatest philosophers of Great Britain. He devoted his researches 
to two leading topics : Formal Logic, and the Theories of Sense-perception. He 
had studied the history of these theories with greater care than any one of his 
own time, and had gathered from his historical researches the most valuable re- 
sults in the way of observation and analysis. His contributions are important in 
respect to all the points which have been noticed. 

1. Sensation and perception were more carefully discriminated by him, as t-e 
their nature and material relations, than by any philosopher before his time. 



200 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 132. 

They are viewed by him as inseparable elements of a single mental state, and are 
called sensation and perception proper. 

2. Hamilton asserts that sense-perception involves the action of the intelligence 
in the form of judgment, or the discrimination of relations. It follows of neces- 
sity that, in perception, man is active, and not simply receptive or passive. These 
important truths Hamilton enforces on every occasion. 

3. In respect to extension and space, Hamilton teaches, with Kant and others, 
that while the spatial relations of every material body are known by sense-per- 
ception, yet space itself is pre-supposed by the intuition of the intellect, in order 
that it may be possible for any of these relations to be perceived as actual. Space 
must be knovn a priori, in order that extension may be known a posteriori. 

4. In respect to externality, Hamilton teaches positively, though not with so 
great clearness as is desirable, that the term is used in two senses : (1) as de- 
noting the diversity of the sentient organism from the perceiving intellect; and 
(2) the diversity of material objects from the material organism which the soul 
animates, and by which it apprehends. 

In respect to the first of these relations, he asserts that it is directly appre- 
hended in every act of sense-perception. 

In respect to the second, he teaches that it is gained by the exercise of the 
locomotive power in the form of muscular effort. This effort is resisted, and 
with the resistance is gained the correlative of a resisting something, external 
to the body or sentient organism. " When I am conscious of the exertion of 
an enorganic volition to move, and aware that the muscles are obedient to my 
will, but at the same time aware that my limb is arrested in its motion by 
some external impediment, in this case I cannot be conscious of myself as the 
resisted relative, without at the same time being conscious, being immediately 
percipient of a not-self as the resisting correlative." 

5. The qualities of material objects are treated by Hamilton as though, 
as qualities, they were the direct object of immediate sense-perception. This 
view is certainly implied in the whole of his doctrine, and his history of the 
sensible qualities of matter. This is a consequence of his failure occasionally 
to discriminate between sense-perception as direct and reflex. He does not always 
distinctly hold to the fact that if in original sense-perception, we can in any sense 
apprehend the qualities of matter, we can only apprehend those which pertain to 
the animated organism. We hold that the qualities oi matter are only known by 
acquired perception in reflex action. 

6. Hamilton sometimes confounds the conditions of perception with percep- 
tion itself. 

He falls into this error in applying the doctrines of latent modifications of 
the mind to the phenomena of vision and hearing. He argues that, because 
two portions of extension, or two parts of an extended substance, each of 
which by itself is invisible, become visible when annexed so as to form one 
continuum, that therefore each of them, by itself, must obscurely affect the 
sensorium or the mind. So, two separate sounds, each one of which might be 
too feeble to be heard alone, when uttered together, cannot fail to be heard. 
In both these cases the distinction is overlooked between the action of physical 
or physiological stimuli upon the sensorium, and their effect on the sensorium as 
the appropriate and indeed the only condition of the responses of conscioui 
Bcnticncy or perception. 



§ 132. THEORIES OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 201 

7. Hamilton attaches too great importance to the subjective sensations, or the 
idiopathic affections of the nervous system, which are excited by electrical ac- 
tion, indigestion, or a blow. The sparks which are elicited by a blow over the 
eyes, the light, the sound, the taste, the ringiug of the ears which electric or other 
agencies occasion, are doubtless owing to a special stimulus of the sensorium, 
and to this only. 

8. Hamilton's theory of perception is vitiated still further by the metaphysical 
assumption that we know directly only phenomena, whether of matter or of 
mind. We hold that neither phenomena nor qualities, as such, are perceived, bu$ 
objects, percepts, or beings; and that it is by an after-thought, or reflex process, 
that these are coanected as qualities, and are referred to substances. 

9. The most eminent service which Hamilton has rendered to the theory of 
sense-perception, is his criticism of all the possible forms of the doctrine of repre- 
sentative or mediate perception, and his demonstration that every such theory is 
untenable. 

We give the substance of his criticism in our own language, for the sake of 
brevity, interposing such qualifications and explanations as may serve to illus- 
trate and explain it. 

In respect to the act of sense-perception, one of two positions may be taken: 
the mind is endowed with the power of perceiving material objects by a direct 
and intuitive energy, without the intervention of any intermediate object ; or, 
the mind can perceive material objects only through the medium of some inter- 
vening object. 

It will here be observed, that the alternative does not relate to the conditions 
of such perception whether material or physiological. It is simply a question 
whether there are or are no' intermediate objects to the p'ycho'oglcal act. 

If the first position be taken, then the only obligation which rests upon the 
philosopher, is to state the conditions which are essential to the act, and to analyze 
the act into its elementary constituents, as given in, or inferred from, our conscious 
experience and careful observation. 

The person who takes the second position is bound to show why this hypothesis 
is necessary. The natural and universal belief of mankind is, that objects are 
perceived directly. He who asserts that this is impossible, ought to give some 
reason for deviating from this belief. The several reasons that are to be found in 
the whole history of philosophy, are by Hamilton reduced to five groups, under- 
lying each of which is a single fundamental principle. The first of them is, that 
an act of cognition is an act of the mind; and to suppose that the mind should 
know that which is not itself, is to suppose that it can go out of itself. To this 
it is replied : 1. That if we cannot explain how it is possible that the mind should 
act on that which is not itself, it does not follow that it cannot be a fact. The 
fact may be ultimate, and for this reason inexplicable. 2. The principle proves 
too much, for it would involve the inference that the mind cannot act upon matter f 
as it manifestly does in volition. 3. Moreover, it would carry with itself the cot- 
sequence that matter cannot act out of itself upon the mind, and of course cannot 
produce a representative image of its object. 

The second reason is, that mind and matter are substances not only of a differ- 
ent, but of the most opposite nature. That which knows immediately, must be 
of a nature corresponding or analogous to that which is known: the mind cannot, 
therefore know matter directly ; an intermediate something must be interposed. 

9* 



202 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 132. 

This assumption is of the widest prevalence, and underlies almost every theory ol 
representative perception. It accounts for the variety of the views of the nature 
of the interposed media held by both ancients and moderns. When this medium 
was conceived akin to the mind, it gave the intevtional species of the schoolmen, 
or the ideas of Malebranche and Berkeley. When it was supposed to be iden- 
tical with the mind, it gave the gnostic reasons of the Platonists, the pre-existing 
species of Avicenna, the ideas of Descartes, Arnauld, Leibnitz, Buffon, and 
Condillac, the phenomena of Kant, the external states of Dr. Brown. To the 
influence of this assumption, are to be traced the systems of the absolute iden- 
tity of mind and matter in the opposite theories of exclusive materialism and 
of spiritual idealism. 

This grand assumption should be rejected as arbitrary, unphilosophical, and 
contradictory to our plain experience. 

The third reason for this hypothesis is, that the mind can only know that to 
which it is immediately present. External objects can hence be brought within 
reach of the mind only by means of some intermediate representative. The pro- 
per answer to this reason is, that the mind is present in every part of the body 
so far as to act and to be acted upon, and that the real object of immediate per- 
ception is some part of the body as excited to a specific sensation. The corrected 
view of the relation of the soul to the body, and of what is the real object of the 
mind's external perception, sets aside this third reason. 

Reid and Stewart attempt to set this aside by a failure to conceive these points 
rightly, and they require some agency of the Deity, and an inexplicable con- 
nection between the sensation and perception, which is unphilosophical and un- 
satisfactory. 

The fourth ground is stated by Hume, that the same object, as a table, at differ- 
ent distances changes its dimensions, but the object itself does not change; there- 
fore the object must be apprehended by an intermediate and changing representa- 
tion. To this it is answered, that the same table is not perceived, so far as vision 
is concerned, when near and remote, but a different object in each case is the im- 
mediate object of sense-perception. 

The fifth reason is stated by the elder Fichte, that, as the will must act in view 
of intelligent objects, these must be within the mind; so far then as it acts in re- 
spect to material objects these must be represented in the mind. 

To this it may be replied, that the act of intelligence is in the mind, and this 
is all that is required as the condition of the act of will. Besides, the act of the 
wili respects future results, which must necessarily be mediately represented. 
It is not denied that the mind is capable of mediate knowledge. The question 
at issue is, whether the act of sense-perception is an act of this kind. 

After having shown that this hypothesis of a repressntative perception is unne- 
cessary, Hamilton shows at length that it does not stand the tests by which every 
legitimate hypothesis may properly be tried. These conditions are : (1.) That it be 
necessary, and be more intelligible than the fact which it explains. (2.) That it 
shall not subvert that which it proposes to explain, or the ground on which it 
rests. (3.) That the facts in explanation of which it is devised really exist, and 
are not themselves hypothetical. (4.) That it does not subvert the phenomena 
which it seeks to account for. (5.) That it works naturally and simply. The 
hypothesis of representative perception fails to answer to any of these conditions, 
and must therefore be rejected by every true philosopher. (Met., Lee. xxv. and xxvi 



^133. THEORIES OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 203 

§ 133. Immanuel Kant, the great metaphysician of Germany, has 
treated of sense-perception only indirectly. He has given no Immannel 

formal theory of its processes, but has metaphysically analyzed its German school, 
results, and thus has indirectly taught a partial theory of the 
power itself and its functions. First of all, he implies that the soul, in its sense- 
perceptions, is passive or receptive only. He contrasts the receptivity of the soul 
in sense with its activity or spontaneity in the understanding. He indirectly 
teaches, by the assumptions that underlie his whole system, that the process of 
sense-perception is not complete until the understanding, by the judging power, 
conceives under some of its forms the matter given by sense. Had he distin- 
guished between the natural judgments which concern individual things and their 
relations, and the secondary judgments that contemplate general conceptions, 
there could be little to object to in his theory ,• but this omission is fatal to its 
completeness and its truth. Sense stands on the one side as a purely passive re- 
ceptivity of individual objects, and the understanding, on the other, as active, 
but as concerned solely with generalized concepts alone. 

Of the relation of sensation to perception, Kant teaches that sensation gives 
the matter, and perception — L e., — intuition — furnishes the form. The form es- 
sential to any and every act of external intuition is space. All material objects, 
so far as they are perceived at all, are perceived in some relation to space — that 
is, they are perceived as extended objects. Kant recognizes this as a fact of 
actual experience. But the fact he subjects to no farther analysis, least of all 
does he examine farther the process by which the product is reached. Instead 
of studying the fact in its conditions and elements, he seeks to account for its 
possibility and the trustworthiness of its results, on grounds of speculative 
philosophy. For this reason, his discussion of space has an intimate relation 
to his theory of sense-perception, and the conclusion which he reached has 
explained the discussions of all physiologists and psychologists since his 
time. This conclusion was, that space and time must be assumed as the ne- 
cessary conditions of our subjective experience in both consciousness and 
perception, but we are not thereby authorized to believe in their objective 
reality. We cannot, indeed, perceive any material object by means of the 
senses without involving necessary relations to space directly, and indirectly 
to time. It does not, however, follow that space is a reality. It is supposa- 
ble, though not to us conceivable, that to minds constituted differently from 
our own, these forms, with the relations which they involve, should not be ne- 
cessarily assumed. (Kritik der reinen Vernun/t. El.Lehre, ii Th., 1 Abth., ii 
Buch, 2 Hauptst. 3 Abscho.) 

In respect to the reality of external objects, Kant reco£2iizes the fact in oor 
psychical experience, that material objects are not only perceived as extended 
and spatial, but also as external; or in other words, as non-egos. In sense- 
perception this distinction is necessarily involved. Indeed, it is included as 
an essential element in the process and its result. But it does not follow, be- 
cause the mind makes this distinction, that there is a reality corresponding 
to this non-ego. For (1.) The non-ego, as a being, is transcendental to all phe- 
nomena. (2.) It is posited in space, which is necessary as a form of sensq 
but which may be only an illusion. Kant would however demonstrate, on the 
ground of speculative necessity, that this is impossible. He contends that we 
must assume that ihere is something permanent and real without, in order to 



204 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 133. 

account for the changing modifications within. Of the existence of an external 
world, we can he rationally assured, but of it, we can have no direct perception. 
Even the self, or ego, is not apprehended as a permanent something. It is 
only concluded to exist as the thought-conception of a spiritual substance with 
capacities for spiritual acts. All that we are conscious of, are our changing 
modifications in time. But these can only be rationally explained by a per- 
manent reality which causes them. 

The theory of sense-perception was discussed by the successors of Kant 
chiefly in its purely metaphysical relations. In the writings of Fichte, Schell- 
ing, and Hegel, still less attention is given to psychological analysis, meta- 
physical principles and relations being almost exclusively considered. 
H b t T F J' F. Herbart's theory of sense-perception may be briefly 

stated as follows : 
The soul, though a simple substance, is capable of being excited by the action 
of various material stimuli to various reactions of its own. Certain classes of 
these, when experienced, are sensations. A sensation is the soul's reception of, 
or its reaction against, this material stimulus. The sensations differ from one another 
in quality or kind on the one hand and in energy or intensity on the other. 

As the several sensations are experienced, each continues to exist in the 
soul, with a force or tendency to be reproduced. As soon as favoring conditions 
present themselves, past sensations reappear in the order of the soul's 
original experience of them. When such a series is viewed [experienced?] from, 
one sensation regarded as fixed, it has time-relations; and by means of the 
mutual struggles or tendencies of several series of experienced sensations to 
gain possession a second time of the soul without success, there is generated 
the idea of pure or simple time. 

The apprehension of time prepares the body for that of space. Sensations 
experienced and recalled in the time series, are disputed by other sensations and 
series of sensations that struggle to occupy the soul. To provide for the possi- 
bility of these mutual struggles, and under the experience of the pressure which 
they create, the mind constructs a conception of space first as occupied, and 
then as empty or void. 

Thus, time and space result to the mind as the effects of mutually blended 
or mutually repelling series of sensations. 

When space and time are produced, that which is next developed is the appre- 
hension of the difference between bodily affections and material objects. This 
results from an experience of certain positive sensations, particularly those of 
touch joined with those of the muscular sense. A certain portion of space within 
the body is measured in every direction by various time-series of sensations, 
terminated by those appropriate to superficial touch. Other sensations we pro- 
ject beyond the surface of the body, at greater or less distances, all of which are 
measured by successive time-series of sensations, in experience or imagination. 
Sensations which do not occur within the space of the body, nor on its sur- 
face as explained, are projected beyond — i. e., are apprehended as not within its 
space. This constitutes perception in the lowest, or the elementary stage. After- 
wards are developed apperception, or the knowledge of mental states by s 
secondary act of knowledge ; then the knowledge of substance and its attri- 
butes ; then a knowledge of material things, or of material substances with ma- 
terial attributes and space-relations. 



§ 133. THEORIES OF SENSE-PERCEPTION. 205 

Schleiermacher, the distinguished philosopher and theologian, deserves also to 
be named for the very important contributions which he made to the theory 
of sense-perception. These were partly indirect, as he opposed so decidedly the 
■current of the great leaders of metaphysical speculation in Germany, by rejecting 
many of the assumptions which are fundamental to their systems. In part, also, 
they were direct, in the positive doctrines which he taught in respect to the condi- 
tions and nature of sense-perception as a process. The relations of space, time, 
substance, and causa, he held, as against Kant, to be real forms of things, and not 
merely the forms of our apprehension of things. The reality of time and space 
must be assumed without misgivings or questionings. Being is directly appre- 
hended, as well as phenomena and relations. To all the combinations and con- 
structions which we make in knowledge, we attribute actual reality. Thought 
which, in Hegel, is the all in all, the originator of the relations and products of 
knowledge, according to Schleiermacher, is psychologically dependent upon 
sense-perception. In sense-perception there are two essential elements : the 
receptive, styled by Schleiermacher "the organic function," and the a priori or 
spontaneous, called " the intellectual function. " This last is an act of knowing by 
relations, and, as so defined, is an important improvement upon Kant, and 
Reid, and even upon Hamilton. 

Schleiermacher, moreover, teaches that the two elements, the organic and in- 
tellectual, are present in different proportions in the different faculties and acts 
of sense-perception, anticipating in this the law of Hamilton respecting the in- 
verse proportion of sensation and perception proper. Important contributions 
have been made to the physiological and psychological theories of sense-percep- 
tion by many distinguished German and English writers, whom it is not im- 
portant that we should notice. . 



206 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 134 

PART SECOND. 

REPRESENTATION AND REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLEDGE. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE REPRESENTATIVE POWER DEFINED AND EXPLAINED. 

§ 134. Representation or the representative poiver 

Representation . , n j . , , 7 . „ 

defined and ii- is deimed in general, as the power to recall, represent, 
and reknow objects which have been previously known 
or experienced. More briefly, it is the power to represent objects 
previously presented to the mind. Thus, I gaze upon a tree, a 
house, or a mountain. The object perceived is the tree, the 
house, or mountain, before my eyes. I close my eyes, and " my 
mind makes pictures when my eyes are shut." I at once re- 
present or see with "my mind's eye" that which I saw just 
before with the eyes of the body. 

My eyes make pictures when they are shut. 

I see a fountain, large and fair, 
A willow, and a ruined hut. Coleridge. 

Hamlet. — My father — methinks I see my father! 
Horatio. — Oh, where, my lord ? 
Hamlet. — In my mind's eye, Horatio. Shakspeare. 

In like manner we hear a sound, either singly, as the solitary 
note of the pigeon, or several sounds in succession, as the caw, 
caw, of the crow, the roll of a drum, or the notes of a musical 
air. Let the sounds cease. We can still distinctly recall them, 
and seem to hear them again with the mind, though the mind 
makes for itself all the sounds which it seems to hear. In a 
similar way we can represent the percepts that are appropriate to 
the senses of touch, of taste and of smell ; reviving the touch, 
taste, and smell by and for the mind alone. 

Music, when soft voices die, 

Vibrates in the memory. 

Odors, when sweet violets sicken, 

Live within the sense they quicken. — Shellet. 

We are not limited to sensible objects, or to sense-percepts, in 
the exercise of this power. We can as truly represent the acts 



§ 135. REPRESENTATIVE POWER DEFINED AND EXPLAINED. 207 

and the affections of the soul itself. Not only can we with the 
mind's eye behold the tree and the mountain previously seen, 
but we can represent the act of the mind by which we beheld it, 
as also the delight which the sight occasioned. We not only 
hear a musical air the second time, but we revive again the idea 
of the accompanying pleasure. So is it with the relations in 
which the objects were presented at first. The objects themselves 
can not only be recalled as objects, but they can be recalled as 
related, or as totals made up of the objects connected by the 
several relations under which they were originally known. 
Whether these are relations of space or time, of self or not-self; 
whether necessary and permanent, or casual and changing ; 
whether intellectual or emotional — whether objective or subjec- 
tive ; — whatever we apprehend in presentation, can be recalled 
in representation. 

But the activity of the mind in this general function is not 
limited to the power of representing objects previously present. 
It can so far modify the objects of the past experience, as to 
transform them into new creations. It becomes in this way, in 
an eminent sense, a creative power. The mind not only can 
depict a man, a tree, or a mountain as actually witnessed, but it 
can alter the form, the dimensions, and the appendages or ac- 
cidents of each, taking parts from the one and attaching them 
to parts belonging to the other. So, also, it can create or 
imagine a Lilliputian, a Centaur, a Parnassus, an Abdiel. The 
representative power in this higher form is called, the fancy or 
the imagination. 

§ 135. The power thus to act is called the repre- 
sentative, in distinction from, and in contrast with the torthopoM™ 
presentative power. In sense-perception and con- 
sciousness, the mind presents to itself for the first time the 
objects of its direct and original knowledge. In representation, 
it presents these objects a second time, or represents them. 

It is also called reproduction, or the reproductive power, 
because the mind, by its own energy, under appropriate circum- 
stances and in obedience to certain laws, reproduces objects pre- 
viously known. 

It also involves the power to retain and conserve, in a certain 
sense, that which, has been acquired by the mind. . To this 



208 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 136. 

capacity the name cf retention has been given, or the retentive 
power. 

To these three distinguishable relations of this power, Hamil- 
ton has not only assigned separate appellations, but has treated 
them as separate faculties, viz., the conservative, reproductive, 
and representative faculties (Met., Lee. xx). But inasmuch as 
it is implied in the power to represent, that there is a power to 
reproduce ; and in the power to reproduce, that the mind can 
retain or conserve, it seems more philosophical to consider and 
treat retention and reproduction as the essential conditions of 
representation, rather than as distinct faculties. 

It is also called the creative power, the constructive or productive 
imagination, when it evolves new products. This exercise of the 
representative power has rarely received a technical appellation. . 
§ 136. The objects of the representative poiver are, 
representative as has already been implied, mental objects. They 
are not real things or real percepts, but the mind's 
creations after real things. They are spiritual or psychical, not 
material entities, although in many cases they concern material 
things, being psychical transcripts of them, either as believed to be 
real or as conceived to be possible. When they concern the soul 
only, they are not the real soul, or its present acts, but psychical 
transcripts of the real soul in a past or possible condition of 
action. They are in no sense object-objects, but are preeminently 
subject-objects. As objects, they are distinguished from the acts 
of the mind which apprehend them : as subject-objects, they are 
created by that very mind, and exist only for that mind. As 
represented subject-objects, they always indicate another reality, 
whether spiritual or mental. 

But though the object of the representative power is a mental 
object, it is an individual object. By this characteristic it is distin- 
guished from a thought-object, or an object of the intelligence. 
Thought-objects are both mental objects and subject objects, and, 
in an important sense, representative-objects : but they are also 
generalized objects or universals. Objects of representation are like 
them in that they are purely mental objects, yet are unlike them 
in being individual. Whether we recall these objects, or create 
them — whether we copy, as exactly as we can, from an original 
in nature, or create constructions the most fantastic, grotesque, 01 



§ 137. REPRESENTATIVE POWER DEFINED AND EXPLAINED. 209 

unnatural, they are all individual. Falstaff, Hamlet, Ivanhoe, 
Jeannie Deans, Don Quixote, Tarn O'Shanter, the Eden of 
Milton, the Faery Land of Spenser, were all individual beings in 
the imagination that originated, and are such in the imagination 
that reconstructs them as delineated by their originators. 
§ 137. The presented object was known by the 

,.,..,.« These objects 

mind not only as a being, but m its relations, as of involve rcia- 
,. . 77. 7 Non- 

diversity, space, time, etc. ; so the object as represented, 

may be known again in all these relations, with all those in addi- 
tion which are implied in its being represented. It should be 
remembered, however, that a relation as such — i. e., a relation as 
separate from an object — as it cannot be apprehended by sense- 
perception or consciousness, so it cannot be recalled by represen- 
tation. A relation, as such, cannot become an image to the rep- 
resentative power, but the object in its relations can be imaged. 

The representative power, not only by its representative act 
recalls the object in the relations in which it was originally 
known, but the existence and exercise of this power involves rela- 
tions that are peculiar to itself. Thus, in recalling a tree or a 
horse previously perceived, or a mental act of knowledge or state 
of feeling, I not only bring back the tree or horse as extended 
and external, and the psychical state as subjective and in time, 
but, in recalling it, I must know it as a subjeet-object, and as 
having been previously perceived or experienced by myself. These 
relations are necessary and peculiar to the representative power. 

For the objects of this power we have no appropriate technical 
name. The words image and picture might be properly applied 
to the represented percepts of vision ; but to speak of the image 
of a sound, smell, or touch, would be incongruous, if not 
offensive. Still less tolerable would it be to speak of the image 
of an act of knowledge or feeling. Conception cannot be ac- 
cepted, as was proposed by Stewart, for it is too frequently 
applied to other and very different objects. Idea would be more 
significant, if it could be forced back to its original and etymo- 
logical import ; but idea has, since the time of Locke, been 
compelled to do all manner of service. In the earlier days of 
the English language the representative power was called imagi- 
nation, or phantasy, and images and phantasms were appropriately 

and literally applied to its objects. ) 

N- 



210 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 139. 

§ 138. The conditions and laws of the representing 
?aws di of rep a r n e d . power should next be considered. The mind, in 
sidered? 11 c ° n " representation, as in the exercise of all its powers, 
acts under limitations and according to laws. In 
representation, man does not, like the great Originator, create 
by his own fiat, his world of mental objects. What he reproduces 
or constructs anew, is in some way dependent upon what he 
has previously experienced. Not only must every thing which is 
represented be reproduced from, or by the means of some 
past experience, but what is represented at any moment depends 
upon what was present the instant before. 

The fact that one object or image brings up another to the 
mind, is called the association of ideas. The conditions or laws 
under which the mind recalls one object by means of another, 
are usually called the laws of association. The term is open to 
exception, because both percepts and experiences are connected 
with images, as truly as images (or ideas) with images. The 
phrase is, however, too firmly established in general acceptance 
and use to be set aside. 

§ 139. The representative power, though marked 
tion e diWded*" by common characteristics and obeying common 
rieties. veraiva " laws, is divided into several varieties, or species. 
These are distinguished by the completeness or in- 
completeness of the pictures which they make of the objects 
once presented ; by the fidelity with which they adhere to, or the 
liberty with which they deviate from their originals; by the 
laws of association which predominate in each variety; and by 
the ends for which the power is exercised, and the uses to which 
it is applied. 

The most perfect exemplification of the exercise of the repre- 
sentative power is an act of perfect memory. Such an act is 
always complex, involving the object, the action, and the agent, 
united by their mutual relations into one indivisible state. If 
the object is material, it involves certain relations of space ; the 
action, being one of a continuous series, involves relations of 
time ; the agent, being the body and soul united, must exist in 
every act under relations of both space and time. When a 
single act of preventative knowledge is recalled in all these 
elements of object and relation, the representation is complete, 



§ 139. REPRESENTATIVE POWER DEFINED AND EXPLAINED. 211 

and the act is an act of perfect memory. For example, yes- 
terday I took a walk to the top of a neighboring eminence. 
To-day I recall distinctly the landscape which I saw, in its 
minutest features — re-creating, as I do, a distinct and vivid 
picture of the scene ; and not only of the scene, but of myself as 
beholding it, with the actions before and after, with my feelings 
also in viewing it, and the very accidents of the place where I sat 
or stood during the view. This is an act of perfect memory ; 
it includes every element of the original. 

As time goes on, it is possible that one or another of these ele- 
ments should be recalled less distinctly, or should be omitted 
altogether. It is possible that I should be able to bring back the 
landscape only as an object, and be certain, as I see or think 
of it, ouly that I once saw it before ; but how or when, or with 
what feelings or from what point, I do not recall. Or possibly 
the object may be lost, and the subjective feelings may alone be 
revived and recognized as having been before experienced. Re- 
lations of time and accessories of place may both be lost. Thus, 
when I see the face of a person in a crowd, I know that I have 
seen it before ; but when, or where, or with what feelings I can- 
not recall. I remember a familiar passage of prose or poetry ; I 
know that I have read or heard it ; but when, or with what 
feelings or attendant circumstances, I cannot tell. All these are 
acts of what may be called imperfect memory. 

But memory, whether perfect or imperfect, is clearly distin- 
guishable from phantasy, or the imaging power. This is repre- 
sentation without the recognition that the objects recalled have 
ever been perceived or experienced before. Examples of this 
are such as the following : I look distinctly at the front of a 
dwelling, the form of a horse, or the outline of a tree, each of 
which I wish to retain and make wholly my own. I close my 
eyes and picture each distinctly to my mind. The undivided 
force of my attention is expended upon the object, and so suc- 
cessfully, that it becomes a permanent possession as an object, 
with few or no accessories of either place or time. In all cases of 
disturbed fancy, often called phantasy, visions of objects seen 
before, but not remembered or recognized, throng in upon the 
soul. There may be no recognition, no knowledge that the object 
is familiar or, has been seen or felt before. These acts are mor« 



212 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 139. 

likely to occur in those conditions of the soul in which the action 
of the reason is nearly suspended, or permanently set aside, as in 
reverie, dreaming, monomania, and partial or complete insanity. 
But the mind can do more than simply represent the past with 
greater or less perfection, with or without the act of recognition. 
It can recombine or construct anew the materials which the past 
furnishes for it to work with or upon. In such acts it becomes 
the creative imagination. Of imagination as thus defined, there 
are several forms or varieties. 

1. The mind may neglect or leave out of view all things ex- 
isting in space, and all events occurring in time, and form to 
itself pictures of void space, and of time more or less extended 
or limited. Within these voids it can construct geometrical 
figures, and arrange series of numbered objects, and thus provide 
for itself the materials of mathematical science. This is the 
mathematical imagination. 

2. It can separate and unite the parts and attributes of objects 
and existences, both spiritual and material, in divisions and com- 
binations which never actually occur, but are grotesque and irra- 
tional. These separations and unions may be made in obedience 
only to the more obvious and the lower laws of association. 
Thus, the chimney of a house can be set upon the hump of a 
camel, and the ears or head of a donkey upon the body of a 
man. Or horses may be colored red or yellow. This is phantasy 
proper ; the products of which are simply grotesque, or as we say, 
fantastic. 

3. Objects may be recalled in wholes or in parts, and recom- 
bined and reconstructed under the obvious and more natural laws 
of association, for the ends of wit, humor, or amusement. This 
is fancy proper, which, as exemplified in literature and some of 
the fine arts has been thus distinguished from the higher imagina- 
tion. 

4. When the higher objects of nature and spirit are recalled, 
recombined, and created, with the aid of the nobler laws of asso- 
ciation, for the higher ends of ideal elevation and improvement — 
when the more elevated feelings are addressed and excited, and 
the nobler capacities of man are called into action, then the 
power becomes poetic imagination. The sphere of this power is 
not poetry alone,, but eloquence, .music, painting, sculpture, archi- 



§ 140. REPRESENTATIVE POWER DEFINED AND EXPLAINED. 215 

tecture, and landscape gardening ; inasmuch as all afford oppor- 
tunities for these higher sentiments and suggestions. This is 
imagination as contrasted with fancy. 

5. When the combinations and creations are effected for the 
purposes of research, invention, and instruction, and under laws 
of association which are grounded on scientific or thought-rela- 
tions, and directed to some definite result or product, we have 
the philosophic imagination. 

When the philosophic or the poetic imagination are employed 
in the service of ethical improvement and religious incitement, 
they constitute an important element in ethical ideality and 
religious faith. 

§ 140. The interest and the importance of the re- 

, ,. . n * -, .-I ' /» -i-i Interest and 

presentative power is enforced by the following con- importance of 

. , . the representa- 

siderations : tive power. 

1. First of all, the exercise of this power ministers 
pleasure of a high order and in great variety, which is indepen- 
dent of the accidents of fortune and circumstances. Whether 
these acts are exercised by the infant in its endless combinations 
of play and sport, as in the simple story which it constructs out of 
two or three incidents, or whether they are employed by the 
novelist or poet in the fiction on which he lavishes all the re- 
sources of culture, the pleasure of creating is the same. 

2. Man often flies to the unreal world of the fancy, to find rest 
and relief from the highly-wrought excitements of the too earnest 
and engrossing real world. Ideal objects and conditions furnish 
associations more pleasing and emotions more satisfying than any 
which the experience of reality can awaken. The sick man 
forgets for a brief moment his actual weariness and pain in the 
scenes of health and action which he imagines. The prisoner is 
enlarged from his cell. The oppressed forgets his wrong. The 
homeless dwells under the shelter of his own roof. 

3. This power is the necessary condition of the higher functions 
of the intellect, and of every description of intellectual achieve- 
ment and progress. The truth is common-place, that memory is 
the servant of thought and the conservator of our acquisitions. 
It was not in idle fancy that Mnemosyne was called by the 
ancients the mother of the Muses. Were the mind limited to 
the objects and the activities of the present, it could make little 



214 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 140 

progress of any kind. Thought would be almost impossible. 
Generalization, by which many objects are viewed as one, would 
be restricted to the few present objects that could be brought 
within the range of a single act of comparison. When such an act 
was finished, its product would be lost forever. It could never be 
reapplied to a new object, or be enlarged in its sphere. The new 
individual objects of sense and of consciousness would also be 
isolated. They could not even be named, for each would stand 
apart in the loneliness of its own individuality. Language 
would be impossible. 

The induction of principles and of laws would be excluded, 
for, however surely the mind might infer that a common law 
controlled the objects perceived at a single gaze, neither the 
objects nor the principles learned through them, could present 
themselves a second time, the one to be exemplified or the other 
to be explained. There could be neither invention nor discovery. 
Even in mathematical science both would be impossible. The 
creations of art would be excluded. The inventor in mechanics, 
the composer in poetry or music, the thinker in morals, philosophy, 
and letters, the deviser of beneficent schemes for human well- 
being, are each and all dependent on the resources of the imagi- 
nation for every possible conjunction of cause and effect, of 
tendency and result. No more manifest or more serious error 
can be committed, than for the philosopher to decry the imagina- 
tion as injurious to, or inconsistent with, eminent scientific activity 
and achievement. 

The practical uses of the imagination are not to be overlooked. 
It creates ideals of what we might be and do, which are far 
higher and nobler than any thing which we are, or which we 
perform. It lifts us above ourselves and the examples we observe 
in real life, furnishing loftier standards toward which we may 
aspire. A pure and elevated imagination is in many ways allied 
to a noble ethical nature, and favors an ardent and a sustained 
religious faith. 



§143. THE REPRESENTATIVE OBJECT. 215 

CHAPTER II. 

THE REPRESENTATIVE OBJECT ITS NATURE AND IMPORTANCE. 

§ 141. The product of the representative power, 
or the object which the mind creates and apprehends f Lpresen ta- 
in memory and imagination, has been the occasion of c5af cSscussion! 
much confusion of thought, and not a little contro- 
versy. Scarcely any single topic has been more vexed in ancient 
or mediaeval philosophy, than the nature of representative 
images. In the discussion of this topic, three topics or heads of 
inquiry present themselves : I. The nature and mode of existence 
of the object which the mind remembers and imagines. II. Its 
relation to the original from which it is derived and to which it is 
referred. III. The special service which it renders in thought and 
action. 

I. The nature and mode of existence of the representative object. 

§ 142. These objects or products, as has already 
been stated (§ 136), are psychical existences. They chicafobjeS. 3 ' 
exist in and for the soul only. They are at once the 
products of the mind which brings them into being, and objects 
for the same mind to cognize or contemplate. Whether they 
are transcribed from real beings and real acts, or whether they 
are created out of the materials or upon suggestions which real 
objects furnish, they are in all cases purely psychical and 
spiritual. It makes no difference whether the original is material, 
or spiritual ; the idea or image of each is simply psychical. 

§ 143. The mental object is as transient and 
evanescent as the act by which it is brought into E i en t 1S a and 
being. In this respect the mental object is strikingly jeJJ*" lved ob " 
contrasted with objects that are real. The acts by which we 
know both psychical and actual objects, are for a moment. 
They cease to be at the instant in which they begin. So is it 
with the psychical as contrasted with the real object. The real 
object alone is fixed and permanent. To it we can come and from 
it we can go, and find it still the same. But the psychical trans- 
cript or creation is as short-lived and evanescent as the act by 
which we behold it. 



216 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 144 

These psychical objects of the representative power are to be 
distinguished from those spectra or hallucinations which result 
from an abnormal or morbid condition of the sensorium or the 
nervous organism. The first are psychical, the second are psycho- 
physical. The first are spiritual in their nature, the second are 
dependent upon the soul as connected with the sensorium. The 
hallucinations or spectra, are intimately related to those sub- 
jective sensations, which, as we have seen, are caused by any 
excitement of the sensorium by means of subjective agencies as 
distinguished from material objects (cf. § 78). They are not 
properly representative images or ideas, which are purely psy- 
chical creations and objects, being created by a psychical power 
under psychical conditions, and having only a psychical ex- 
istence. 

itisanintei- § 144. These representative objects are no', only 
lectuai object. p S y C hical, but they are intellectual objects. It has 
been held by some that when memory recalls past psychical expe- 
riences of feeling and of will it recalls the experiences themselves, 
and not our ideas of them. " It is not ideas, notions, cogni- 
tions only, but feelings and conations, which are held fast, and 
which can, therefore, be again awakened." "Memory does not 
belong alone to the cognitive faculties, but the law extends in like 
manner over all the three primary classes of the mental phenom- 
ena." {Ham. Met.yLec. xxx). This opinion of H. Schmid is ap- 
parently sanctioned by Hamilton. It is a logical inference from 
one of the doctrines which he seems to advance concerning con- 
sciousness. But if consciousness is an act of knowledge, and know- 
ledge, when matured, gives, as its products, intellectual objects 
which we can recall ; then, as when we feel we know that we 
feel, so, when we remember that we have felt, we remember our 
past feeling as an object known — i. e., we recall our idea of it 
.(§ 56). The pleasure which I enjoy is not the original pleasure 
revived, but a fresh pleasure from the object recalled by the 
intellect, and perhaps a reflex pleasure from the fact that it 
is revived. But whatever it be which excites the pleasure, 
whether the exciting object or the pleasure excited, it is the 
object, or the pleasure as remembered — that is, it is an intellectual 
object which it apprehended by the mind. The representative 
object is not only a psychical, but it is also an intellectual object. 



§ 146. THE REPRESENTATIVE OBJECT. 217 

II. The relation of the representative idea to its original. 

§ 145. The relation which the represented object 
holds to the real or presented object, is sui generis, be compared to 
and can neither be resolved into, nor explained by 
any other. It is important to distinguish it from those relations 
with which it is so often confounded, and thus to clear away 
many errors into which philosophy has often been betrayed. 

§ 146. In doing so, we observe: (1.) That the 

, , , . , .1 • . Representative 

ideas which we acquire by consciousness or perception ideas of objects 
cannot possibly resemble their originals, either as parts ness aud sense- 
to parts or as wholes to wholes. Neither the single rToT^esembie 
features nor the combined wholes of any mental em ' em ° ry- 
transcripts can by any possibility resemble the single features or 
united wholes of any material or spiritual being or act. A 
mental object is wholly incapable of being confronted or com- 
pared with an existing reality. One material thing can be like 
another material thing as a whole and as a part ; one spiritual 
being, or a single spiritual act, can be like another spiritual being 
or act ; one tree can be like another tree ; one mental state can 
be like another ; one act of perception can be like another act ; 
but the mental image of a tree cannot be like a tree, nor can the 
mental remembrance of a mental experience resemble or be like 
the original act or state. 

It is true, one of these may be loosely and vaguely said to 
resemble or be like the other ; but that this language is only 
employed in the way of analogy, is evident from the contradic- 
tions and absurdities into which those philosophers have involved 
theniselves who have understood it literally. 

We have seen (§ 129) to what contradictory and impossible 
conclusions Locke's definitions of knowledge, as the discernment 
of a conformity or resemblance of ideas with their objects, ex- 
posed himself, and actually conducted Berkeley and Hume. 

The representative idea is not known to consciousness as resem- 
bling any original. 

We observe still further : (2.) When we remember or recognize 
objects which we have previously known, we do not discern any 
proper resemblance between the original and its mental tran- 
script. For example, we look upon an object, as a house, a tree, 
a portrait, the page of a book ; or we hear a sound, we perform 
10 



218 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 14$ 

some mental act, or experience some feeling ; and when thi 
object is removed, we recall it in our memory. It were simply 
absurd to say that we recall the material object by its mental 
object, or that we remember the object by its likeness to the 
mental picture which we revive to our minds. A discerned re- 
semblance supposes two objects between which the likeness is 
seen ; but in an act of simple memory it is plain that only one 
object is before the mind. It is therefore clearly impossible that 
any resemblance should be discerned; for that two objects 
would be necessarily required. In recalling or remembering a 
past object, event, or mental experience, we simply picture it as 
having been before discerned or experienced in fact, and we do 
this by a direct act of knowledge. 

When it is said that this mental image is transcribed from the 
original, or represents it, the language describes an act and 
objects which are emphatically sui generis, and incomparable with 
any other. 

The relation of these mental transcripts to their originals can 
only be understood by considering the acts of the mind by which 
we acquire and recall them. The nature of mental products can 
only be understood by the mental acts which give them birth. 
To understand the relation of a transcript to its original, we 
must consider the nature of the act by which we acquire it, as 
related to the act by which we recall and revive the same. 

To bring these acts together, in order to compare them, let 
them be employed alternately upon the same object. As the eye 
opens and shuts upon the landscape seen and the landscape 
imaged, the real landscape is alternately remembered and 
perceived. When the eye is shut, it is remembered as having been 
seen. When it is recognized, it is recognized as the same that 
we saw before, and which we had remembered during the in- 
terval ; but in neither case is any resemblance discerned. It is 
involved in the act of memory, that the object perceived should 
be recreated by the mind and recalled as real, and also that, 
wheji the object is remembered, it should be recognized as the 
game which was perceived. Moreover, there is also involved the 
knowledge that the object as perceived was real, and that the ol> 
ject as reproduced in memory is mental only, 



§ 147. THE REPRESENTATIVE OBJECT. 219 

§ 147. The nature of any product or object is de- Positive ch» 

. ^ ~ ... -, racteristics of 

termined by the mind s capacity to originate it ; and mental pi» 
the authority of the mind to trust it and accept the 
objects which its own activities involve, is to be found in the fact 
that it finds itself, so to speak, spontaneously exercising the 
power. Concerning this peculiar object and its relation to its 
original, we affirm positively: — (1.) The mental picture affects the 
sensibilities less powerfully than the perception or experience of 
the reality. By the supposition, if the original be a sense or 
material object, it must move or excite the senses; and this class 
of experiences are in their essential nature absorbing and vivid. 
If the experience be of a mental act or state, no recollection or 
transcript can match the reality in its power to interest and 
excite the soul. 

Different persons differ greatly in the power vividly to repro- 
duce and make real the past, and as greatly in the capacity to 
be moved by it in their sensibilities. Some persons cannot 
revive a scene of pleasure or pain without ecstasy or horror ; the 
very picture or remembrance of any thing which they have en- 
joyed or suffered seems to revive much of the delight or pain 
which the original experience occasioned. But even the sensi- 
bility of such persons to the pictures which their memory re- 
vives, is usually in direct ratio to their susceptibility to the pre- 
sent and the real. That the real object excites more feeling than 
the same object remembered, is assented to by common ex- 
perience and confirmed by universal testimony. 

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem 
Quam quse sunt ocaHs subjecta fidelibus, et qum 
Ipse sibi tradit spectator. — Hor. De. Art. Poet. 

0, who can hold a fire in his hand, 

By thinking on the frosty Caucasus ? 

Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite, 

By bare imagination of a feast? — Shakspeare, Rich. II. 

(2.) The mental picture consists of fewer elements than the 
original. It is but a scanty outline, as contrasted with its 
fullness — a skeleton as compared with its roundness and life. 
We look at a real tree, and in the background there is the con- 
fused or vague perception of the as yet undistinguished mass of 
form and color, while from it is projected in bold relief a few prom* 



220 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §147. 

nent parts that attract and hold the attention. If we test by 
the reality the best picture that we can frame in the fancy, we 
are surprised at the poverty of the one and the richness of the 
other. 

(3.) The mental picture is recalled in parts under the laws by 
which one suggests another, and is constructed with comparative 
slowness. The reality displays its wealth of detail as coexistent 
and at a single view. Or, if we study its details with attentive ana- 
lysis, we do this with inconceivable rapidity, under the guidance 
and suggestion of the object itself. The object, when re-created 
in memory, is re-created in the several parts of which it is com- 
posed : if a material object, in the several sense-percepts which 
make it a thing or whole. If it is extended in space, or mani- 
fold or irregular in outline, the parts of the surface and outline 
must be recovered one by one, under the laws of association, and 
by acts that are successive to one another in time. 

To illustrate these contrasted features, we need select but a 
single example. It is a precipice up which we gaze. First it im- 
presses us as a whole, diversified by its varied features. Foremost 
are the broad faces of perpendicular or impending rock. These 
are buttressed by slopes strewn with accumulated fragments. 
Here and there are bushy crags and scattered boulders. The 
whole cuts against the sky with a notched outline, fringed here 
and there with nodding herbage, or broken by some daring tree, 
that, stayed upon its uncertain footing, reaches out and up toward 
heaven. If all this is apprehended by sense-perception, the 
quick eye first surveys the whole with a rapid sweep, then runs 
hither and thither, as it is caught and led by some salient feature, 
the rock itself bringing out new material faster than the mind 
can appropriate it, impressing the feelings with new emotions 
of wonder the longer we strive to master its wealth. 

Let us seek to image that rock in the mind, at evening, when 
we are just returned from a fresh gaze upon its front. In place 
of the exhaustless confusion of the vaguely-seen whole to guide 
and excite the eye, there is slowly revived the scanty frame 
work of the few parts which can be recalled by the mind. These 
parts are recovered one by one, as the mind resting upon what 
is already present brings back in fragments, and by repeated 
efforts, that which each present object suggests. However excitinp 



§ 148. THE REPRESENTATIVE OBJECT. 221 

the effort to recall and reconstruct, and however pleasing the 
picture that is recalled, the impressiveness and exciting power of 
the reality are wholly wanting. 

The objects which the creative fancy or imagination in any way 
combines or constructs do not differ greatly from those which 
the memory transcribes, in their relation to the real existences of 
matter or spirit. The only material difference between the two 
can be expressed in a word — the one represents real, the other 
possible existences : the originals of the one in fact exist, and 
have in fact been perceived or experienced ; realities correspond- 
ing to the other might exist. In every other respect the two 
classes of objects coincide. 

III. The usefulness of ideas in thought and action. 
§ 148. The special service of the products of the 

-, . * n thought, we 

representative power for thought and action remain prefer ideas to 
to be considered. It has already been observed 
(§ § 46, 56), that the process of perception, or consciousness, is 
normal and complete when it results in an idea or image — i. e., 
when a transcript of the individual object is prepared for future 
recall. The usefulness of these acquired facts and of these 
ideas of possibilities of nature will be accepted by every one. 
That they are absolutely indispensable to secure the past, and to 
give range and reach to invention, is obvious to every mind. 
But it is not clearly, certainly it is not generally acknowledged, 
that, for the purposes of thought, remembrances are often better 
than percepts, and that the pale and scanty images which the 
mind creates are often superior to the fresh experiences which life 
presents. We often even prefer to employ mental images, when 
we might avail ourselves of actual observations. We often turn 
a fact into a mental picture or recollection, even while our eyes, 
our ears, and our attent consciousness seem to be occupied with a 
present reality. 

The reason is, that the image, (supposed to be correct) presents 
to the mind fewer elements than the reality, and therefore does 
not distract, but aids the attention in the activities of thought. 
Moreover, the elements which it includes are usually the very 
elements or features with which thought concerns itself. For this 
reason recollection often guides thinking, and aids it in its work. 



222 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 149. 

When we change our perceptions into ideas, or ideate our 
perceptions, we retain only what we attend to ; hence the image 
presents fewer points or elements than the original. We are 
likely to attend to what is most important, especially if we bring 
to our observations an eye instructed by the previous training of 
thought, or the experiences of scientific inquiry. A disciplined 
mind will of necessity direct the observations of things to those 
features with which thought is concerned ; and these points will 
remain recorded in the memory for thought to classify, or be 
recombined in the imagination for thought to invent and to 
explain. 

In a certain sense, representation abstracts while it revives ; as 
it omits much of what it perceives or feels, and retains only 
what it cares for. 

Hence, in observations of things which are accompanied with 
any comparative analysis of judgment, we close and open the 
senses by alternate acts. We close the sense, that we may with 
undistracted thought think or judge of the image which it gives. 
We open and use it again, that we may correct or fix the image 
by or upon which we think. 

§ 149. As the mind widens its range of materials 

Ideis especial- . . ,.. 

ly useful in for thought, and rises to higher generalizations, its 
and g.meraii- images of things will need to consist of still fewer 
features — viz., those only which it needs to use in 
classification or reasoning. So far as it brings before its view 
concrete realities or individual examples, these need only contain 
those parts or elements which come into use in generalizatiou, 
induction, or argument. The plastic power of representation 
here comes into play, which can readily omit all that is not 
necessary to be considered and can easily supply every thing that 
illustration or discovery may need. 

Representation can go so far in its abstractions as to leave but 
a meagre outline, a mere skeleton of a concrete thing or group 
of objects. Such a skeleton has been called a schema. Such a 
schema or outline-image has been held not only to be the ne- 
cessary condition for the formation and use of concepts, but it 
has been also contended that it is like the concept in being 
general and equally applicable to every individual thing to 
which the concept can be referred. For example, when we speak 



§ 149. THE REPRESENTATIVE OBJECT. 223 

or think of such terms or things as horse, dog, or flower, it is 
urged that the mind frames a schema, or outline-image of the 
form or other relations of each subject, which is equally suitable 
to every individual horse, dog, or flower. This schema, it is urged, 
differs from the concept, in that it is not divided or severed into 
constituent elements, each one of which is regarded as an attri- 
bute of a substance, but it remains as an extremely abstracted 
whole, which may be applied to every individual horse, dog, or 
flower. This view contradicts the doctrine which we have laid 
down, that the object in representation is always individual, and 
never general. The image of a horse or dog need not be 
general because it is very scanty or meagre in its constituent 
elements, having to do only with a few that are characteristic, 
as the form, the head, the limbs, etc. ; but so far as the object is 
imaged at all it must be individual. The reason why it seems to 
be general is, that being a creation of the imagination, it can 
readily be changed by addition or omission, so as to conform to 
the horse or dog before us. It is more exact to say that the 
schema is conformable rather than general ; i. e., it is capable of 
being readily adjusted to every object of its class, and hence its 
preeminent utility. Whatever form or features the individual 
image may take which we happen to construct, it can be easily 
shaped and adjusted to the individual example before us. 

The nature of the outline image, or schema, and its relation to 
the concept, will be still further considered under the concept. 
(§ 107.) 

We observe, however, in passing, that it is more than a mere 
conceit to say, that, as we rise from perception to thought, we in- 
terpose the image or idea as an intermediate object which is less 
gross and entangling than matter, and yet more substantial, de- 
finite, and concrete than thought. The image directs and aids 
the concept, standing, as it does, midway between it and the 
percept. On the other hand, the idea, especially when directed 
by thought, reacts upon perception itself, making it more intelli- 
gent and productive, as it directs the sanses to what features it 
should attend, and often anticipates what they will find. In this 
way aimless efforts are spared, fruitless voyages of discovery are 
avoided, and the energies of the mind are expended upon pro* 
ductive objects. 



224 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 150. 

§ 150. Not only do images assist in perception and 

Images pre- " ° x 

pare for and thought, but they prepare tor and so prompt to action. 
If we recall an object which formerly moved us to 
excited feeling and impelled us to prompt and energetic action, 
the thought of the same object is fitted to excite us again in a 
similar manner, in real or mimic activity, in body and in soul. 
If an action is soon to be performed — if we are to sling a stone, 
or point a rifle, or throw a quoit, the image of the act and object 
held before the mind brings all the muscles into position, and 
makes ready for the act required, the instant the act is called for. 
Hence, in any discipline for feats of bodily dexterity, a vivid 
and concentrated fancy, a strong and kindling imagination, are 
of essential service, as they bring the powers into that position 
which effective activity requires. The same is true of discipline 
to mental exertion, so far as any purely spiritual activity de- 
pends on the distinct conception of its object. The thought of 
an enemy to be assailed, or of a wrong to be avenged, knits the 
muscles, braces the limbs, and convulses the features. The 
sensitive idealist is convulsed with horror at the pictures which 
his imagination draws of the scenes of cruelty which he reads of 
or conceives. He acts over, in fancy, the part which he him«eif 
would be ready to take in any depicted scene. 

When men are to act in concert ; as to row, or pull, or aXout, 
in unison, or to repel an assault, or to storm a battery, or u* any 
way to use their united strength, their imagination Bmot be 
brought into active service in anticipating beforehand the objects 
which will soon present themselves, or the kind of activities in 
which they are to engage. The ideal is far better than the real 
scene for the purposes of discipline and anticipation. .Che real 
object may distract and bewilder as well as arouse and hold the 
attention. It may over-excite, and so unman. It may bring up 
unexpected objects, as well as those which are looked awd hoped 
for. The reality, as compared with the idea, may hiuder action, 
as it hinders thought. While, then, the idea cannot take the 
place of the reality, and discipline by means of the idea is of 
little avail unless it actually prepares for action, it is essential to 
such preparation. Nature has provided for this discipline by the 
strong impulse which she awakens toward it : she secures great 
deeds by first awakening grand pictures in the excited fancy. 



§ 151. THE CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 225 



CHAPTER IIL 

THE CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION THE ASSO- 
CIATION OF IDEAS. 

§ 151. We have noticed already that the soul, in 

Association of . . • ji .. , n . . • t •- i 

ideas, impor- representation, as in all its acts or functions, is limited 
terertofthe 111 ' to fixed conditions, and acts according to established 
subject. laws. What is recalled at any moment, though re- 

called by the soul's proper activity, is always recalled by means 
of the cognitions and feelings which the soul possessed the 
moment previous. The general fact or truth that ideas are rep- 
resented by means of ideas now present, is usually designated 
under the general title or phrase ; " the association of ideas." 

The term suggestion has, by some writers, been preferred to 
association. They prefer to say, one idea suggests another idea, 
rather than, one idea is associated with another. This preference 
is partly a matter of taste in words, and in part is grounded on 
the philosophical theory which one of these terms is supposed to 
designate better than the other. Some object to the phrase, The 
suggestion or association of ideas, because ideas are not the only 
objects or -elements that are concerned ; real or existing objects 
or phenomena being as truly capable of exciting representations 
as the ideas or remembrances of things. But, the phrase is too 
well established in general use to be easily set aside, even though 
the reasons for so doing were vastly stronger than they are found 
to be in fact. 

To seek to determine what are the conditions and laws of repre- 
sentation, is to propose an inquiry to which we are impelled by 
the intrinsic interest and even mystery with which the power 
itself and its actings are invested to all thoughtful minds. Ham- 
ilton observes (Met, Lee. xxxi.), that " the scholastic psychologists 
seem to have regarded the succession in the train of thought, or., 
as they called it, the excitation of the species, with peculiar 
wonder, as one of the most inscrutable mysteries of Nature/' 
" The younger Scaliger says : ' My father declared that of the 
causes of three things in particular he was wholly ignorant — of 

10* 



226 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 151. 

the intervals of fevers, of the ebb and flow of the sea, and of 
reminiscence.' " " The excitation of species is declared by Poncius 
' to be one of the most difficult secrets of Nature (ex difficilioribus 
naturce arcanis);' and Oviedo, a Jesuit schoolman, says, ' Therein 
lies the very greatest mystery of all philosophy (maximum totius 
philosophic sacramentum).' " This impression of mystery and the 
wonder which it excites are not at all surprising. Thoughts and 
images come and go with the apparent caprice and lawlessness 
of wizards and fairies — now obtruding themselves when they are 
not wanted, and then hiding themselves most provokingly, not- 
withstanding the most earnest desires and the loudest calls for 
their return. To explain these phenomena by certain definite prin- 
ciples is an essential prerequisite to an enlightened theory of each 
of the special forms of this power, as the memory, the fancy, 
and the imagination, in all their varieties. All these so-called 
powers of the soul are, as has been explained, but special forms 
of the general power mentally to represent the actual past, and 
they must all depend upon common conditions, and obey common 
laws. A just arid well founded theory of the association of ideas 
lies at the foundation of any satisfactory theory of all these 
several powers. Representations are also always employed in 
the actings of the other leading powers, viz., sense-perception 
and thought ; and for this reason the consideration of the laws 
which regulate their presence or absence is essential to a com- 
plete elucidation of the powers with which, at first, they seem to 
have little concern. On the other hand, when the movements of 
representation are explained, this explanation is taken to ex- 
plain almost every thing beside ; so largely do the coming and 
going of represented objects enter into the other phenomena 
of the soul. A very considerable number of psychologists, as 
we have already remarked, have accordingly resolved all the 
psychical powers into the operation of the laws of association — 
viz., reasoning, induction, the belief in causality and adaptation, 
and even in time and space. The association of ideas has played 
a most conspicuous role in the modern theories of the soul and its 
operations, and its influence upon such theories was perhaps 
never so great as at present. Next to false or inadequate theories 
of sense-perception, have incorrect theories of the association 
of ideas exercised the most mischievous influence upon tho 



§ 153. THE CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 227 

scientific views of the soul, and indirectly on philosophical, 
ethical, and theological theories (cf. § 40). 

§ 152. To form a correct theory, it is necessary, as in similar 
cases, to state at some length the defective or erroneous theories 
which have been accepted to explain these operations and laws. 
This will enable us to pronounce a critical judgment upon then- 
error, as well as to recognize the truth which they include, and 
will prepare us to develop a theory that is true and satisfactory. 

It will be observed, that the laws of association pertain to what Hamilton 
calls the reproductive, as distinguished from the representative power; in other 
words, to those operations of the soul which prepare objects for the soul's appre- 
hension, as distinguished from the soul's acts in cognizing them when prepared 
and presented ($43). In representation in all its forms, these functions must 
necessarily be very prominent and important. In representation, the soul pre- 
pares and furnishes its own objects of cognition. The capacity to do this, and 
the laws under which the operation is performed, are analogous to the psycho- 
physiological capacities and acts of the soul by which sense-objects are pre- 
pared for the soul's sense-perceptions. (£ 135.) 

The laws of association have been divided into two leading 
classes, the primary and secondary, which otherwise may be de- 
nominated general and special. They are distinguished thus : 
the primary or general are those which act or tend to act at all times 
and in all persons, while the secondary and special are those which 
determine the associations of different persons or of the same persons 
at different times. 

The theories which we shall notice apply to both these classes, 
though more eminently to the primary. We begin w T ith 

I. The primary laws of association. 

§ 153. We observe, (1.) that the theory is up ten- Association not 
able which explains the phenomena of associations J*jjj{" ne<1 b ? 
by the mechanical or physiological laws of a bodily za tion. 
organ which is assumed to be the instrument of the soul in 
representation. 

It has been held by not a few writers, among w r hom Bonnet 
was conspicuous, that the brain, or nervous system, is such an 
orgaiL. As what we know in sense-perception was thought to be 
or depend upon certain vibrations, undulations, or oscillations 
of the brain and nerves, so it was held that the objects thus 



228 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 153. 

apprehended for the first time can be re-presented to the imagi- 
nation or the memory, whenever these same oscillations or vibra- 
tions are resumed or repeated. Others maintained that every 
act of perception results in a permanent condition or disposition 
of certain of these fibres, which is active again in represen- 
tation. Some held that, in addition to the oscillating fibres of 
the brain, there is also present a very delicate and sensitive fluid, 
intermediate between the brain and the soul. Those who held 
that the soul is immaterial, insisted that the brain and nervous 
system are its organs in representation, on the action of which the 
mind as completely depends for its images and remembrances in 
representation, as it does on the organs of sense for its objects in 
perception. Still greater plausibility was sought for this theory 
by the attempt to show that the soul itself has a special seat or 
organ in the braiu, by the sympathy of which with the vibrations 
of the remaining portions all its phenomena can be explained. In 
view of the theory that the senses and the imagination were thus 
dependent upon the sensorium, i. e., the brain and nervous sys- 
tem, etc., these powers were formerly ascribed to the lower or 
inferior energy, which was called the animal soul, or the s jul in 
contrast with the spirit or higher and rational soul, to which the 
nobler and more spiritual functions were allotted. In modern 
times, since the various sensible qualities have been resolved into 
modes of motion, and many physiologists and some psychologists 
have resolved the capacities of the sensorium for different sensa- 
tions into simple susceptibilities for more rapid vibrations, there 
has been a renewed disposition to make the representative power 
to depend on revived vibrations of the nervous energy. Such 
theories have, however, been usually carried out to the bald 
materialism with which they have a strong affinity. 

We have already explained sufficiently how earnestly the cere- 
bralists and associationalists of recent times reassert the same 
views, and seek to enforce them by the aid of the results of 
modern physiology. (§40.) 

All these theories fail to be supported, by reason of a common 
defect. The structure of the brain and nervous system in no 
way indicates that they are capable of the vibrations or oscilla- 
tions which are postulated of them. This structure is not en 
tireiy fibrous. What seem to be fibres, are not capable of the 



§ 153. THE CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 229 

tension and relaxation which vibrations, whether rapid and 
forcible, or slow and feeble, would require. They are not suffi- 
ciently numerous to answer to the myriads of millions of states 
of thought and feeling which are represented in memory and 
the fancy. Not a single change of the kind alleged has ever 
been known to occur in connection with a represented object. 
We call the eye and the ear organs of sight and hearing, 
because, with the observed conditions and the varying states of 
these organs, sensations are present or absent, or vary in quality 
and force ; but never has a nerve- movement been observed, or 
even conjectured, to which might be referred the remembered 
face of an absent friend, or the vivid picture of a once-visited 
scene. Nor has any vibration of fibres or nerves ever been, 
known to be connected with any picture or remembrance what- 
ever. No nerve-cell has been known to be formed in connection 
with a picture fixed in the memory, or a purpose decisively 
taken. Again, the theory, if satisfactory in every other par- 
ticular, would fail entirely to account for the creative energy of 
the imagination. Representations of this sort are very abundant, 
and often very vivid and forcible ; but how the most of these 
fantastic and gorgeous scenes could be provided for by any dis- 
position of fibres or vibration of nerves, it is impossible to see. 
What makes the theory plausible is the fact that certain 
conditions of the body are connected with a special activity of 
the representative power. In some of these states this activity 
is excessive, irregular, and even uncontrollable. When the 
body is in health and in a normal condition, memory both 
acquires and gives up its treasures with the ease and exactness 
of instinct; and imagination combines and creates, as if by 
the spell of an enchanter, so skilfully as to be herself surprised 
at her own work. Under the excitement of delirium, the eleva- 
tion of enthusiasm, or the brief madness of passion, the power 
to recall and create seems almost to be used by another self; 
now mocking the vain efforts of the man to control the rush of 
his too affluent fancy, and now suggesting for his service or his 
delight unexpected stores of facts and fancies. It is vain, at 
times, that the soul essays to retard or to still the throng of 
unwelcome images that break in upon it like a succession of 
stormy waves. In sleeplessness induced by an elation of the 



230 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 153. 

nervous system, the rational soul seems to be separated from th« 
imagination, and to become the passive spectator of its wayward 
caprices. We are wearied to exhaustion by the force and per- 
sistence with which these fancies at once bewilder and overmaster 
us. In delirium, the fancy seems to have completely overmas- 
tered the intelligence, paralyzed its functions, or frightened it 
from asserting its rightful supremacy. 

These phenomena can be accounted for by two considerations: 
First, there is the general truth, that the soul is dependent for 
the measure of force which it has at command, on the force and 
normal activity of the powers which maintain the corporeal life. 
When the bodily force is weakened, the force of the mind is 
often weakened in every one of its functions — in sense, represen- 
tation and thought. 

Second, a disturbance of the functions and activities of the 
body is attended with an unequal action of the powers of the 
soul. This can in part be accounted for by the obtrusive influ- 
ence of the sensations and other mental experiences which are 
the consequence of irregular bodily action. The soul seems to 
have at its command only a certain quantum of psychical 
energy, which may be evenly distributed among the various 
activities of which it is capable — as sense, consciousness, repre- 
sentation, and thought ; or, if concentrated into one, it is in so 
far withdrawn from the rest. It has already been noticed, that 
we cannot exert the utmost energy in hearing and seeing at the 
same instant ; still less can we employ sense-perception and the 
reasoning powers at the same moment and with the highest 
energy and effect. In extreme hunger or active pain, the sen- 
sations are so absorbing as to exclude all energetic spiritual 
activities, whether of thought or feeling. In still other con- 
ditions, the generally dormant vital and muscular sensations 
may be so positively obtrusive as to weaken the soul's capacity 
to fix the attention upon any other objects with steadiness and 
effect. And yet these muscular or vital sense-perceptions, 
though obtrusive and unpleasant as sensations, may be so vague 
and indefinite as -perceptions, as to serve chiefly as the suggestors 
— under the laws of mental association — of other images. We 
ought never to forget that, in all conditions of our existence, 
so long as we exist as soul and body, these vague sensations of 



§ 154. CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 231 

which the body in all its parts is the occasion, form the constant 
background on which are projected the more definite and dis- 
tinctly remembered of our experiences. When these sensations 
become more than usually active, through an excited or a diseased 
condition of the body, they can suggest every image with which 
they have been connected in the past ; and thus preoccupy the 
whole force of the soul's activity. The condition of the body 
may affect the whole activity of the soul, by simply introducing 
unusual psychical experiences, which operate according to purely 
psychical laws, both in withdrawing the attention from the rational 
functions, and in obtruding a throng of associated images. These 
considerations explain many cases of the singular and almost 
capricious dependence of the memory upon the varying condi- 
tions of the body. 

§ 154. (2.) The phenomena of association cannot 
be resolved into any attractive force in the ideas socLtkm °dn- 
themselves, by which they suggest or revive one an- to anVattSS 
other. This theory differs from the one just discussed, idIL P a°sluch m 
in making the ideas, as psychical agents, to exert a 
force similar to that which was ascribed to brain cells or brain 
fibres. 

Many of the explanations given of the phenomena of associa- 
tion, represent ideas as attracting one another somewhat as 
two drops of water, or two globules of quicksilver rush into one ; 
or as if, when the larger drop or globule is divided, the one divi- 
sion draws the other after itself. 

Thus Hobbes writes: "All fancies [phantasms] are notions within us, relics of 
those made in (he sense; and those notions that immediately succeeded one 
another in the sense continue also together after sense; in so much as the former, 
coming again to take place, and be predominant, the latter followcth, by cohe- 
rence of the matter moved, in such manner as water upon a plane table is drawn 
which way any one part of it is guided by the finger." (Zeu.,p. i. ch. iii.; cf. 
Hum. Nat., eh. iii.,g 2; and Elem. Phil., ch. xxv. Locke says : "Some of our 
ideas have a natural correspondence and connection one with another :...., 
Ideas that in themselves are not at all of kin, come to be so united in some men's 
Blinds that 'tis very hard to separate them ; they always keep in company, and 
the one no sooner at r,ny time comes into the understanding, but its associate 
appears with it, and if they are more than two which are thus united, the whole 
gang always inseparable, show themselves together/' {Essay, B. ii., c. xxxiii., $ 5). 
Hume says : " These are, therefore, the principles of union or cohesion among 
•ur simple ideas, and in the imagination supply the place of that inseparable 



232 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 1 55 

connection by which they are united in our memory. Here is a kind of attraction 
which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in tbj 
natural, and to show itself in as many and as various forms. Its effects are every- 
where conspicuous ; but as to its causes, they are mostly unknown, and must be 
resolved into original qualities of human nature, which I pretend not to oxplain." 
(Hum. Nut., B. i.,p. i.,Sec. iv.) James Mill (Analysis of the Human Mind, chap, 
lii.) says : "When two or more ideas have been often repeated together, and the 
association has become very strong, they sometimes spring up in such close com 
bination as not to be distinguishable. Some cases of sensation are analogous 
For example : when a wheel, on the seven parts of which the seven prismatic 
colors are respectively painted, is made to revolve rapidly, it appears not of seven 
colors, but of one uniform color — white. By the rapidity of the succession the 
several sensations cease to be distinguishable ; they run, as it were, together, and 
a new sensation, compounded of all the seven, but apparently a single one, is the 
result. Ideas, also, which have been so often conjoined, that whenever one exists 
in the mind the others immediately exist uloog with it, seem to run into one 
another — to coalesce, as it were, and out of many to form one idea; which idea, 
however in reality complex, appear? to be no less simple than any of those of 
which it is compounded," etc., etc. This view is accepted by J. Stuart Mill, and 
the doctrine of "inseparable associations," thus enounced, is with him the axiom, 
which is the "open sesame" of all metaphysical and psychological problems. 

The most consistent and thorough-going advocate of this theory of the attrac- 
tive force of ideas, as ideas, either in ancient or modern times, is Herbart. All 
the mental phenomena, and even the several powers of the mind, he accounts for 
by the actions and reactions of these ideas. Ideas arc strengthened when 
they recur often enough to gather the force which blends them into one or arranges 
them in a permanent series. After being experienced, they remain in a condition 
of constant tension, ready on the slightest occasion to rush back into the posses- 
sion or rather the pretence of the soul; and again pressing hard to return as soon 
as a kindred object of perception or representation shall attract them back. 

This theory is open to similar objections with the one which follows, with 
which it is intimately allied. We observe next, that 

§ 155. (3.) The conditions and laws of representa- 

Nor into the s v ' . r 

force of reia- tion cannot be referred solely, or even primarily, to 

tions as such. , - , . i • i " • 

the force of certain classes oj relations which exist 
between ideas. This theory is, in its principle, not superior to 
that which ascribes attractive force to the ideas themselves. 

Aristotle enumerates three of the relations which are said tc 
constitute the laws of representation, viz. : Contiguity in time and 
space, resemblance, and contrariety (De Mem. et Rem.,Q. ii.,§ viii.). 
Hume asserts the three laws of association to be resemblance, con- 
tiguity in time and place, and cause and effect. Others increase 
this number to seven, viz. : Coexistence or consecution in time ; 
wntiguity in space; dependence as cause and effect, means and end, 
whole and part ; resemblance or contrast ; the being produced by 



§ 155. CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 233 

the same power or conversant about the same object; signified and 
signifying ; designated by the same sound. Others, as Hamilton, 
contract them to two: Simultaneity and affinity. All these 
laws are founded in truth. They all describe facts of conscious- 
ness, although they fail as we shall see to recognize the ultimate 
principle or law of the mind's activity, in such cases. 

Examples can easily be adduced of the representation of ideas 
under all of these relations. We begin with those of 'place. 
When I recall a single building upon a familiar street, I 
think at once of the building adjoining, and so on, of each that 
is next. 

Contiguity of time is illustrated by the following: When a 
single event is thought of, which occurred upon some day of my 
life made memorable by joy or sorrow, that event suggests the 
others -which occurred in connection with itself — either before or 
after — till the whole history of the day has passed in review 
before the eye of the mind. 

Inasmuch as all objects adjacent in space must, if perceived 
with attention, be originally perceived by acts successive to one 
another in time, it may and generally will happen that when 
they are recalled as contiguous, they may also be recalled as suc- 
cessively perceived ; and thus often the relations of time and place 
act conjointly. Thus, if I examine the interior of a large 
public hall or church, I may walk around it on my feet, drawing 
near to every part which I inspect ; or, standing in one place, I 
may survey every object by successive applications of the eve, 
fixing the objects in memory by the relations of time. But these 
objects are also contiguous in place, and form together a whole 
of space. 

The relations of similarity and of contrast serve to recall 
objects. If I see a house like the one in which I lived when a 
?hild — it is of no consequence wdien or where — it causes me to 
think of my early home. If I see a face that resembles the face 
nt' a dear but absent friend, it brings that friend to mind. The 
likeness may be of the whole to the whole, or of a part to a 
part ; as of a door or roof (the part of a house) to a door or 
roof; or of a single feature in the face to another feature. So, 
objects that are unlike, especially such as are strikingly con- 
trasted, recall one another. Cold makes us think of heat, light 



234 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 156t 

reminds us of darkness, joy of sorrow and sorrow of joy, sweet 
of bitter and bitter of sweet. 

The relation of cause and effect is constantly recognized in our 
experience. The cause may recall the effect, or the effect the 
cause. Fire makes me think of heat, and ice of cold. The 
wound under which I suffer, recalls the blow which caused it. 

Under cause and effect, and dependent upon it, is the relation 
of means and ends. Any instrument or contrivance suggests the 
use for which it was devised. Thus, a fire-engine makes us think 
of a conflagration ; a locomotive, of the drawing of a railway 
train ; a thumbscrew, or a case of surgical instruments, of torture 
or amputation. The thought of an end suggests the possible or 
necessary means. If a weight is to be raised, or a building is to 
be moved, we think of a lever, or a combination of screws and 
rollers. 

To these relations three -others have been added. Operations 
or objects of the same power or faculty, suggest one another, and the 
faculty concerned. The sign suggests the thing signified, and the 
thing signified the sign. Objects accidentally denoted by the same 
sound are associated. A little attention will convince any one 
that all these may find a place either under the law of cause 
and effect, or under the very comprehensive relation of con- 
tiguity of space and time. 

The attempt to increase the number of the rela- 

Are not other • ■-■•• i i o 

relations sup- tions that are conceived to operate as laws 01 asso- 

posable? . .. .. , _ 

ciation and conditions of representation, most natu- 
rally suggests the inquiry, whether there is any special charm in 
the three or four relations of resemblance, contrast, contiguity 
of space and time, and causation, which invests these alone with 
efficacy in the production of ideas. We ask at once, Why may 
not any other relations serve as well as these ? Why, of the twc 
objects that are connected by any relations whatever, may not 
each suggest its correlate ? We find, in point of fact, that this 
is so — that objects connected by many special relations, as c* 
premise and conclusion, evidence and inference, do recall each 
other. 

§ 156. (4.) Philosophers have with greater plau- 
SegJatie f n r . ed " sibility united all these relations under what they 

have called the law of redintegration, which is tlnu 



§ 156. CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 235 

announced : Objects that have been previously united as parts of a 
single mental state, tend to recall or suggest one another. Redinte- 
gration, as here used, is equivalent to the complete restoration 
of the whole, on condition of the presence of one or more of its 
parts. This law was announced by St. Augustine, by Wolff, by 
Malebranche, by J. G. E. Maass, and is accepted with some 
qualification by Hamilton. 

It is an interesting question, whether this law will meet and explain all the 
special cases of representation. If we concede that the three or four laws or 
relations enumerated by Hume and others comprehend every supposable in- 
stance, and attempt to resolve all these irito the law of redintegration, we shall 
find the following results: 

(a.) Objects contiguous in time present no difficulty. Indeed, the law of red- 
integration might be viewed as only another expression for the law that objects 
conjoined in time tend to restore or suggest one another. 

(6.) Objects adjacent in space, as has already been observed, usually come 
under the relation and law of contiguity in time, and are therefore easily ac- 
commodated to the law of redintegration. 

(c.) The most of the cases in which objects are recalled under the relation of 
cause and effect, will readily be solved by the law of redintegration. For in 
order to be connected as cause and effect so as to be recalled the one by the 
other, they must first have been united under this relation in a previous mental 
act; and if so, they come at once under the law of redintegration. 

What is true of causes and effects, is still more obvious of means and ends. 
The same is true of premises and conclusions, data and inferences, or the so- 
called logical relations. 

(d.) The relations of similarity and contrast present some difficulty. When I 
see a face never seen before, at once the thought flashes upon me, " The face is 
like the face of a friend long absent or dead;" or when I see a horse which stri- 
kingly resembles in color, form, or action, another horse which I formerly 
owned, and the image of that horse is called to mind, the objects that recall and 
those which are recalled, were never conjoined in fact. This seems to be in- 
solvable by the law of redintegration. 

Maass ( Versueh uber die Einbildnngskraft), and others have sought to bring it 
under the same by the following solution : What we see in the resembling face, 
or the resembling horse, is some special and separable feature or peculiarity, one 
or more. Let this be called a, and let the remaining features or peculiarities be 
sailed b. Let all the observed features or characteristics of the same, both the 
resembling and the non-resembling, be called A. Let the face or the horse never 
seen before be designated by B. When B is seen, the part a is seen as a separa- 
ble constituent, for by the supposition it attracts special attention. The first act 
is to perceive B ; the next act, to notice a, the resembling feature ; but a has 
before been conjoined with b, giving the total A. As soon as the past a is appre 
hended- it brings back its associate b, and A is therefore recalled. When, for 
example, I look at a portrait of Sir Philip Sidney, I am reminded of its like- 
ness to the portrait of Queen Elizabeth, because of the ruff which is about the 
^e«k of each, which in this case is the only common feature and attracts at once 



236 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 156. 

the attention. The ruff — which is the same in both — brings back every thing 
besides in her Majesty's portrait — the head-dress, the features, the sceptre, the 
robes, etc., etc., till the whole is restored. If this solution is accepted, the law 
of redintegration is established as the one comprehensive and sufficient law of 
representation. And this would be, "objects which have been previously united at 
parts of a single mental state, tend to recall or suggest one another." 



The law of redintegration cannot be accepted for the reason that: 
The part of a mental state which is said to recall or tend to 
recall the whole, is not literally the same which has previously 
been an object to the mind. Every time the mind apprehends 
either a part or the whole, it has a new percept or image, whether 
partial or total. If, having seen two resembling horses together, 
I afterward see one, I am impelled at once to think of the other ; 
or if the sight of a third resembling horse makes me think of one 
or both, there is to the mind in every instance a new object pre- 
sented and pictured. The percept of the same hoi se taken in 
successive moments, or at long intervals, is mentally conceived 
not as the same, but as a similar mental entity or object. All its 
force to attract, or suggest, or recall another object, comes not 
from the sameness of the part or the whole objectively viewed, but 
from the similarity of the two or more mental percepts or mental 
images regarded subjectively, or as the products of the mind's 
similar activities. Whatever this tendency, or readiness, or force 
may be, it is derived entirely from the mind's own activity, and 
not at all from the sameness of the objects as parts or wholes. 
The mind thinks, or tends to think of a when it perceives or 
thinks of b, because it has previously acted in a similar activity, 
in whole or in part. When a occurs to it, whether in perception 
or thought, a certain form of partial subjective activity begins, 
which involves, by reason of the fact that the like activity has 
been previously experienced, a greater facility of completion. 

The law of redintegration, as ordinarily phrased or enounced, 
is liable to the qualification which was noticed in § 154, viz., 
that no attractive force can be affirmed or conceived to pertain 
to ideas as such. Objects or ideas have of themselves no greater 
force or tendency to restore those which with themselves made up 
a mental state, than they have to attract one another. The force 
in the final analysis must come from and reside in the miud 
whose products they are. 



§ 157. CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 237 

§ 157. (5.) The real principle that explains all the 

f . . , „ " ,' . The roal expla* 

phenomena and laws of association is to be found in nation, how 

r euuunced. 

the comprehensive general fact or law, that the mind 
tends to act again more readily in a manner or form which is simi- 
lar to any in which it has acted before, in any defined exertion of its 
energy. 

As the result of our analysis, we accept this as the principle 
which comprehends the so-called laws of association. We have 
seen that these laws are not physiological, but psychical ; that the 
attractive force by which one idea is said to be able to recall 
another, does not lie in the ideas as such, viewed as separate from 
the mind's energy in producing or beholding them : nor does it lie 
in the relations as such under which the objects were connected in 
the mind's previous act of uniting them, nor in the power of a part 
of the mental state to reproduce its fellow-part or whole, but in the 
ultimate truth that, in whatever way the mind may act, it thereby 
is enabled to act in a similar manner a second time. Every ori- 
ginal act is always complex, including objects separated and 
united, as parts and as a whole, by definable relations. If the 
mind cognizes a part of any of these wholes, it begins to act in a 
way similar to that in which it has acted before. The tendency 
to finish the whole of the act thus begun explains the principle 
that underlies the laws of association. 

This comprehensive law enables us to explain not only the re- 
currence of two objects that have previously been connected in 
the same instant of time, but the return of those also which have 
followed one another in a consecutive order ; as the words that 
form a sentence suggest each other, or the names that have been 
learned in a series, or the letters of the alphabet, etc., etc. 

The reference of the laws of the representative power to the 
subjective force or energy of the mind, explains the influence of 
states of feeling, as well as acts of the intellect, upon the repre- 
sentative activities. The state of feeling in which I perceive or 
think of an object — e g., a glorious sunset or an interesting story 
— is often as distinct to my apprehension as the object itself. It 
should follow that a similar feeling excited a second time ought 
as truly to tend to recall a similar object, as a similar object the 
feeling. That the feelings are potent instruments of memory, ia 
confirmed by the experience of every one. It often happens thai 



238 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §157. 

a feeling of disgust once occasioned by some object, can never be 
experienced again without recalling the object itself. This is 
often observed of the bodily sensations, as those of sea-sickness or 
headache. It is scarcely less conspicuous in the experience of 
purely psychical emotions when these are perfectly defined or are 
traceable to some determinate cause ; like home-sickness or sudden 
fright. In such cases the experience of a feeling which is at all 
similar to the feeling in question, however dissimilar may be the 
occasion or exciting cause, will bring back the intellectual cogni- 
tion with which it was originally connected. We have already 
explained that in such cases the feeling operates through the 
agency of the intellect. 

This principle also serves to explain the predominance of 
certain associations over the intellect and character of different 
persons. If the tendency to reproduction and recall is an 
original force or law, then it is natural that the energy with 
which any individual act or state of the soul tends to be revived, 
should be proportioned to the relative force of the original act ; 
in other words, to the attention which is bestowed upon its ob- 
jects or parts, whether these are objective or subjective. An 
excited interest is the condition of concentrated attention ; for, 
as has already been observed, aroused feeling awakens the in- 
tellect, detains its gaze, and excludes distracting objects. Hence, 
the intimate dependence of the memory and imagination of 
different persons upon the character and strength of the emo- 
tions, the buoyancy and depression of their spirits, etc. Hence, 
preeminently, the influence of those commanding purposes and 
prevailing habits which make and mark the individual man, 
upon the objects which he most frequently recalls and recombines, 
under his prevailing and dominant associations. That every man 
has his dominant associations is universally observed and con- 
fessed. The reason is, with the one person, that the favorite ob- 
jects of the soul's activity are certain classes of objects with their 
relations ; and with the other, objects that are very unlike them. 
But in every case, the associations by which each recalls objects, 
follow the energy with which he cognizes them. One man recalls 
objects and relations which never occur to another, chiefly 
because the one contemplates these objects and relations, and 
with intense energy, while they scarcely catch the notice or at- 



§ 157. CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 239 

tention of the other. Open before two men the same landscape, 
the same picture, the same architectural design ; tell them the 
same narrative, introduce them to the same companion, let them 
listen to the same poem, lecture, or sermon, and the active intel- 
lect of each will be busy in selecting objects from each, dis- 
cerning them in special relations and fixing them for future 
recall. 

Tt also explains why our associations with objects perceived are 
more energetic and permanent than those connected with objects 
remembered or imagined. That which is seen with the eye or 
heard with the ear, other things being equal, holds the attention 
more closely and longer than that which is merely remembered, 
or painted to the fancy. It is constantly present, firmly fixed, and 
held closely before the mind for it to return to as often as it will. 
The associations with home are a good illustration 
withhome. 10 " 8 of this principle. When we merely think of the 
home of our childhood, it brings back a throng of 
recollections associated with its places and persons ; but when 
we visit our home, we cannot repress them. They are connected 
with every apartment ; they start up from every corner ; they 
attend upon all our walks ; there is not a tree, or rock, or stream, 
but thrusts into our very faces, and forces upon our attention, 
its throng of associate memories. 

Objects of imagination have this advantage over objects of 
sense, that they are more free from unwelcome and unpleasant 
elements, and are subject more entirely to the creative power. 
But objects of sense stimulate the associative tendency to greater 
energy, and furnish it with the greatest variety of material. 

Our principle also explains why certain conditions of the 
body affect the power to recall, both favorably and unfavorably* 
Disease may both hinder and quicken the energies of the soul tc 
acquire, and, of course, to reproduce its acquisitions ; for, in all 
cases, the tendency to reproduce is measured by the energy of 
the original activity ; and this varies, as the body helps or 
hinders the mind to detain and concentrate its attention (cf. 
§ 153). 

The principle which refers the tendency to be reproduced to 
the original energy of apprehension enables us to understand 
why the mind represents only a portion, and often but a single 



240 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 158. 

element, of an object presented. We perceive a complex ma- 
terial object ; we read a written page ; we examine a fine draw- 
ing, engraving, or painting; we hear and understand an 
elaborate and convincing argument ; we enjoy a succession of 
pleasurable sensations or emotions. But we bring away, or 
possess the power to recall, only a few parts or elements of each, 
but those are invariably the parts or features which we have 
energetically presented to our cognition. If we revive these 
speedily, we unite and preserve them by an act of greater energy. 

It is essential to an act of knowledge that its objects be 
discerned in some relation. States of feeling even are moved 
and excited by the discerned relations of objects, as truly as by 
the apprehension of their unrelated existence. The relation is 
often quite as much an occasion of intellectual or emotional 
activity as the parts related. Sometimes it attracts the exclusive 
attention, and the entities concerned are set aside and overlooked. 
I may listen to several similar sounds from different musical 
instruments, or human voices ; the sounds compared may scarcely 
be noticed, only the circumstance that they are similar. Twenty 
effects may be produced by a common agent or cause. The 
individual effects are scarcely observed, for the attention is oc- 
cupied by the common relation by which they are connected. 
In hearing a person read, or in reading ourselves, we often do 
not notice the words ; the mind takes up only the relations which 
constitute their meaning. 

These facts explain why the relations of objects, and especially 
why three or four more prominent relations, figure so conspicu- 
ously as laws of association. The relations named are none 
other, as we shall see, than the comprehensive or general cate- 
gories which connect and conelitionate all our knowledge (§ 515). 
These relations are the laws of association, inasmuch as they are 
the instant and universal conditions of original cognition. What- 
ever we know energetically under these relations, we know a 
second time under and by means of one or more of these cate- 
gories. 

II. The secondary laws of association. 

§ 158. The theories which we have considered thus 

E^Snel7 far chiefly relate to what are called the primary laws 

of association. Other laws have also been proposed 



§ 158. CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 241 

which are called secondary. The primary laws are conceived as 
explaining the tendency of certain classes of objects to recur to the 
mind. The secondary laws are conceived to regulate the recur- 
rence of one individual object in any of these classes rather thac 
another. They might with propriety be called laws of the pre- 
ference or precedence of particular objects. 

The secondary laws have been enumerated and propounded as 
follows: (1.) Those objects are more likely to be recalled, other 
things being equal, which occupy the mind for the longest period 
of time; (2.) those also which are apprehended most vividly; (3.) 
those which are brought most frequently before the mind ; (4.) those 
which were most recently present; (5.) those which are the most 
free from entangling relations; (6.) those which are contemplated 
with the greatest strength of emotion ; (7.) those which are viewed 
with favoring circumstances of bodily health ; (8.) those which are 
coincident with prevalent habits; (9.) those to which the original 
constitution of body or mind furnishes a special aptitude, (cf. Dr. 
Thomas Brown, Lecture 37.) 

A critical examination of these laws will enable us to reduce 
them to some general expression. Perhaps it will show that both c -^ to " the 
the secondary and primary rest upon the same general principle, same principle 
The first, concerning length of time, has already been shown to mary * **" 
be necessarily involved in the operation of the general law for 
which we have contended, that an attentive or energetic apprehension of objects 
in their relations is a ground of their tendency to be recalled. The second is 
nearly coincident with the same fundamental principle. 

The third presents ground for inquiry. Why does simple repetition give any 
advantage? We answer: A second look, especially if it follows that which pre- 
ceded after a considerable interval of time, presents the object as divested of the 
distracting influences which novelty furnishes. Each new or repeated view, 
whether near or remote, also reveals some fresh relation either to a familiar or a 
novel object, and thus increases the chance of its being suggested to the mind a 
second time. For example, by one act the diamond is apprehended ns the bright- 
est, or the hardest, or the most mostly of the gems ; and so, when the gems are 
thought of, the diamond is suggested. At another view, its relation to carbon ic 
discerned, and then the diamond will be recalled when charcoal, or marble, or 
carbonic acid are present to the thoughts. 

The fourth law is, that an object contemplated recently, is, if other things are 
equal, more likely to be recalled than the same object if viewed longer ago. A 
countenance casually and hastily seen an hour since, may be recollected or re- 
called by another similar face within this short interval of time, but may be lost 
forever if the occasion which suggests it does not soon present itself. The fact is 
unquestioned, and it may perhaps be inexplicable. But obviously, it rather con- 
cerns Joss or waste of power, than any positive force or tendency. If expressed in 



242 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 158. 

the language or terms taken from the general principle which we have laid down 
as fundamental, it would be thus phrased: "the tendency of any act of the mind 
to be recalled or repeated is weakened by disuse, till, finally, it wholly ceases.'' 
Whether it is properly said to be weakened, or superseded, is an open question. 
This is true of the kindred question, whether any acquisition of the mind can ba 
irrecoverably lost. 

One palpable and prominent exception to this general tendency to weakness or 
loss may be urged, in the frequent cases of persons who in old age remember 
nothing so vividly as the scenes and events which occurred longest ago. Often 
the whole of the intervening life is entirely effaced from the soul, while the 
memories of youth and childhood are still vivid and distinct. Several reasons 
may be given for this plain exception to the operation of the laws already con- 
sidered. Many of the remembrances of childhood have been recalled again and 
again through a long life. Though the events of childhood, as realities, were 
present to the mind longest ago, yet, as thought- ohjects, they may be the most 
fresh and recent. Nor should it be forgotten that the objects and events of child- 
hood were contemplated by the mind at first with an almost exclusive and ab- 
sorbing attention. The memorable occurrences of childhood were the absorbing 
subjects of thought for days before they occurred. They were reviewed with 
the fondest reflection after they were past. The learning to count ten or one hun- 
dred, the wearing of a certain dress ; the beginning of school-life ; the long antici- 
pated, the often-reviewed and recited visit to some relative, the first considerable 
journey, the first party, the first composition — were most important occurrences 
in their time, and spread themselves along a large portion of the horizon of the 
infant life. 

The fifth law (which relates to entangling relations) has already been pro- 
vided for. If the points or features to which these relations, — and the thereby 
related objects, — are attached, are very numerous, the greater is the probability 
that the objects will be recalled, provided the relations, and the related objects, be 
discerned with equal energy of attention and ardor of interest. But if the 
multiplicity of relations divides and thus weakens the interest, the influence of 
their number is distracting and entangling. In illustration of the operation 
of this law, Dr. Brown observes : " The song which we have never heard bu - 
from one person, can scarcely be heard again by us without recalling that person 
to our memory ; but there is obviously much less chance of this particular sug- 
gestion, if we have heard the same air and words frequently sung by others" 
(Lecture 31). 

Upon this we remark : If the frequent repetition of the song has the effect to 
withdraw the attention from the first impression, and to exclude its being often 
repeated and revived, then it becomes less likely that the person who sung it for 
the first time will be suggested by the air; but if, every time it is sung by any 
one, that person is recalled, then the song will be more ineffaccably associated 
with him the more frequently it is sung. 

The sixth and seventh have already been noticed and explained (§§ 152.3). 
The eighth needs but a word. So far as facility of association depends on repe- 
tition, and so far as particular habits facilitate repetition, so far is this general 
fact resolved by the law concerning repetition. So far as habit, or easy repetition 
by habit, enables us to concentrate the attention with greater energy and interest, 



§ 159. CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 243 

so far is its power explained by the strength of the single or repeated apprehen- 
sions for which habit provides. 

The ninth law supposes that there are original differences and aptitudes in 
different individuals for certain classes of associations. This is doubtless true. 
But it should never be forgotten that these original aptitudes do not pertain to 
the faculty of representation or the so-called faculty of association as such, but 
that it extends equally to the power of presentation and intuition. Whatever 
we energetically observe or connect by relations, in original intuition, we revive 
by association. There is no special aptness for special associations, or for vari- 
ous and ready suggestion, separate from a readiness to discern special classes 
of objects and relations, and to discern them with interest and energy. 

§ 159. There are what seem, on the first aspect, 
exceptions to the universal application of the law ce^ions^the 
of association. There are many cases when a J^ ofassocia - 
thought seems all at once to dart into the mind, 
which has no apparent connection with any thought or thing 
that is present. We cite the familiar example recorded by Hob- 
bes : "In a company in which the conversation turned upon the 
late civil war, what could be conceived more impertinent than 
for a person to ask abruptly, What was the value of a Roman 
denarius ? On a little reflection, however, I was able to trace 
the train of thought which suggested the question ; for the 
original subject of discourse introduced the history of the king, 
and of the treachery of those who surrendered his person to his 
enemies ; this again introduced the treachery of Judas Iscariot, 
and the sum of money which he received for his reward " {Levia- 
than, p. i. c. 3). 

This case is no more singular nor striking than the experience 
of any lively mind could furnish in every half-hour. If any 
person not absorbed with the objects of sense, or bent upon some 
present achievement, will break in upon his movements of 
reverie with the question, How did this or that thought occur to 
my mind? he will be surprised, and perhaps amused, at the 
series of strangely connected thoughts which introduced it to his 
notice. In many cases, the thought, though apparently abrupt and 
strange, will be found to have a real connection with the thought 
which it seemed to jostle and displace. There are thoughts, 
however, the connections of which we cannot follow. What ought 
we to believe in respect to these ? Should we still hold that the 
laws of association govern their movement, though we cannot 
trace their presence or furnish the proof of their working ? 



244 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 159. 

In answer to this question, two opposite views have been main- 
tained. The first is held by Dugald Stewart and others — that 
the mind is momentarily conscious of the presence of these in- 
tervening objects, though it cannot recall them in memory; that 
they are present long enough to act as media of association, but 
not long enough to leave any trace of their presence. 

The second theory is urged by Hamilton, following a suggest 
tion of Leibnitz, and agreeing with the school of Herbart. 
These all contend that, " though these intermediate objects may 
be present long enough to influence the train of consciously as- 
sociated thoughts, yet the mind is in no sense aware of their pre- 
sence ; for it is unphilosophical to suppose an object present to 
consciousness without leaving some impression upon the memory. 
No analogous cases can be adduced, and the hypothesis must be 
rejected as groundless." Besides, it is urged, " another principle 
can be adduced to explain the phenomena — that of latent or un- 
conscious modifications of the mind. In this we have a re- 
cognized and actually existing law, which is sufficient to account 
for all the facts." (Met, Lee. xviii.) 

Upon this argument we observe, that ii is not true, as is repre- 
sented, that there are no grounds on which to rest the first hypo- 
thesis. In the very case supposed, when one idea suddenly and 
strangely follows upon another, if we bethink ourselves at once, 
we can recall some intervening links. We say, if we bethink 
ourselves at once , for if the effort is made a few instants later, 
the clue will fall from our hands. At other times, when it seems 
to have totally escaped and eluded us, it can be recovered by 
persistent effort and determination. Now, the fact that in some 
apparently desperate cases we can succeed, demonstrates that 
the objects might have been — nay, that they actually were, 
present to the consciousness, though they seemed not to have 
been. We have a right to infer, then, on grounds of analogy, 
that they are so in all cases. The analogy of acknowledged and 
similar phenomena is wholly with the first theory. Moreover, 
analogy would seem to suggest and confirm the principle, that 
where there is a feeble activity of consciousness, there is a feeble* 
hold upon the memory ; and we conclude conversely, that where 
there is the slenderest hold upon the memory, there must have 
been the feeblest possible energy of consciousness. What is in' 



§ 160. CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 245 

tended by the phrase latent modification of consciousness, is 
not altogether clear. If it be explained as only a very low 
degree of conscious activity, the two theories are in principle the 
same. 

§ 160. The representative power tends to unceasing Repregen tation 
activity. The mind, if given up to the operation of JJJf^jg 1 * ■£ 
the laws of association, would never cease to furnish can + . be inter - 

' m r up ted. 

itself with new objects. Each object last discerned 
would suggest another. This would call up its fellow, and the 
series of successive objects would suffer no interruption and would 
come to no end. It has been said with great effect — that, were 
the senses excited to action only long enough to furnish the soul 
with requisite material and fully to develop all its powers, and 
then to be sealed up forever, the spirit would have acquired 
material enough for its endless activity in simple representation. 
(Bishop Butler, Analogy, p. i., c. i.) We know from observa- 
tion, that when the other activities are as nearly suspended as is 
possible, as in dreaming and reverie, the train of associated 
objects still rushes past the eye of fancy with a rapidity that 
cannot be measured. But strong as this activity is, and difficult 
of control as at times it may be, it does not often assume exclu- 
sive or supreme possession. There are two methods by which 
this activity is interrupted and turned aside. The one is objec- 
tive, the other is subjective. 

We consider, first, the objective interruption. Every new 
object of sense-perception introduces a foreign and diverting ele- 
ment. In such cases representation gives way to presentation or 
acquisition. We do not deny that both these activities may be 
exerted together, and that presentation and representation, may 
go forward side by side. It would seem from experience that 
this often happens. In waking gently from sleep, the images of 
the dream-world blend with the realities of the sense-world* 
Even in our waking hours, the hard world which the senses give 
us, is beset by the spirit-world in which we dream. The soberest 
world of the most prosaic and practical thinker sparkles with 
the images which the fancy interweaves into its homely fabric. 
Let this be admitted, and still it is true that the two species of 
activity cannot occupy the attention at the same moment with 
equal energy ; and that the sense- world and sense-objects will 



246 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 160. 

break in upon the activity of the fancy. Let but a single object 
do this for a single instant, and a starting point is furnished for 
a new train of thought in an entirely new direction. 

The subjective interruption, diversion, and control of the repre- 
sentative activity of the soul, are still more important. The ego 
which at times may seem to be the helpless victim or the amused 
spectator of this moving diorama, is not always an idle or pas- 
sive looker-on. It has but to detain any single object, and the 
object detained suggests new objects, to each of which it sustains 
many relations. By simply arresting the course of representation, 
its independent activity is as truly controlled and newly directed 
as if some object of sense had obtruded itself upon the attention. 

But the mind can do that which is far more effective and im- 
portant than to detain an object before its attention from impulse 
or passive excitement. It can exert upon every such object its 
higher activities of thought. If it cognizes the existence of the 
object, it discerns it as present, and as diverse from itself. It 
may remember it as having before been present. It may compare 
it with other objects, bring it into a new or a familiar class, name 
it, reason about it, make from it some induction, mould it into 
some imaginative creation, apply it in illustration and analogy, 
discern in it relations of beauty, learn from it some moral lesson, 
or find in it some manifestation of the divine. Each one of these 
activities will evolve a new product, which product may serve as 
a starting-point for a new series of representations. These activi- 
ties are far more potent and effective than the merely passive 
services of the representing power, though they blend with 
them so intimately as not easily to be distinguished from them. 
As the mind mingles the thinking power with the activity of per* 
ception, when it seems only to see and hear with the organs of 
sense, so does it elevate and transform its acts of memory and 
fancy by the penetrating analysis and combining synthesis of 
rational judgment. 

That is a most superficial and limited conception of the 
representative power and the laws of association, which resolves 
into them all the nobler and more important operations and pro- 
duct of the human soul. Such a view excludes individuality 
and self-respect— as well as the capacity for the higher achieve 
ments of science, duty and faith, (cf. § 40). 



§ 160. CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 247 

Besides this direct action upon the representative faculty, there 
is another which is exerted indirectly, if possible with greater effect. 
The action is direct when, in the ways described, the ego arrests 
and modifies the onward current of what would otherwise be pas- 
sive tendencies. It is indirect so far as, by every such action, a 
greater facility or force is given to such tendencies for the future. 
Every present energy of attention, every special effort of creation 
or thought, gives additional strength to certain bonds of associa- 
tion, and imparts special facility to the mind in reviving their 
objects. This very circumstance enables us to apply the mind to 
similar objects with less effort and greater pleasure, till at last 
the mind has created for itself almost a new medium of life, a 
second atmosphere for its own easy and familiar action, which is 
purely the product of its own previous activities. The feelings 
provide for their own perpetuation and increased force as they 
direct to this or that intellectual activity. Hence, preeminently, 
every controlling or commanding purpose, whether morally good 
or bad, tends to perpetuate itself, and to secure the execution of 
its own behests. Under the constant presence and guiding con- 
trol of such a purpose, all the trains of associated objects become 
its " ready servitors," which bring to mind, when needed, the facts 
and suggestions, the illustrations and arguments, the happy 
phrases and expressive words, which are required for thought, 
expression, and act. Various familiar phenomena illustrate the 
force of these indirect influences upon the representative faculty. 
The same material object suggests to different persons associations 
that are entirely unlike and even opposite to one another. The 
scene, the house, the apartment, which to one man is full of the 
deepest interest, is to another indifferent. To one person it recalls 
suggestions fraught with peace, affection, and joy ; to another, 
memories of hatred, remorse, and terror. To the same man, on 
different occasions and in different moods, the same object will 
suggest different associations, according to the feelings of the hour 
or the purpose for which he is thinking. We may almost say 
without exaggeration, that in every present activity of the mind 
there is revived and indirectly made to reappear the whole of the 
man's previous history, as each of its acts and events have been 
taken up by the force of the soul's purely passive tendencies, and 
so incorporated into its very essence. 



248 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 161. 

§ 161. The law of association, according to the 

Law of associa- . ^ . ° 

tion and law of views oi its nature and energy which have been en- 
forced, rests upon the same original principle usually 
known as the law of habit One object suggests another, because 
one mental state which is similar in part to another tends to be 
like it in every particular. This principle, when expressed in 
ither language, is equivalent to, Any mental activity or experi- 
3nce, when it is repeated, is more readily performed. 

Habit, Lat. habitus, Gr. ef:?, is literally a way of being held, 
or of holding one's self. Thus defined, it must denote a perma- 
nent state of rest which has been reached as the result of action 
or growth, or a permanent form of activity, or of readiness or 
facility for any kind of activity. As such facility for action is 
universally observed to result from repetition of action, this last 
element is taken up into the conception or definition of habit. 
The acquisition of facility by repetition, supposes that some diffi- 
culty or hindrance has been overcome, whether the habits are 
purely psychical or corporeal, or whether they are both physical 
and mental conjoined; whether they are emotional or moral, or 
whether, as is often true, they are all three together. 

Examples of bodily habits are furnished by a particular gait ; 
the dexterous management of the hand in the use of a saw, a 
chisel, a hatchet, or a plane, in driving or in drawing ; and the 
control of the limbs in dancing or gymnastic feats. The acquisi- 
tion of such habits does indeed usually involve some psychical 
activity, and the gain of facility by repetition. But we may consider 
apart the formation of the body only to a new habitude, and for 
the moment have to do only with the changes in the states and 
functions of the body which our senses observe to be more and 
more readily made. We suppose, that at the outset the special 
use required is difficult, either because some habitual and unde- 
sirable adjustment or predisposition of the muscles has been 
attained, or because they are imperfectly or wrongly adjusted by 
nature. An effort is required involving physical tension or phy- 
sical pain ; as when we would bring the organs to utter the unused 
sounds of a strange language, or would bring the fingers or the 
limbs to painful or constrained positions. We may explain the 
obstacle or hindrance by a certain power or tendency of the 
reflex activities of the nervous system. The conquest may con- 



§ 161. CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 249 

sist in the facility which it is possible to acquire, by a gradual 
assumption in the reflex motors of new forms of muscular adjust- 
ment. 

We pass next to mental habits — first, those which are devel- 
oped in connection with such bodily adjustments as we have sup- 
posed ; and second, those which concern functions that are simply 
and purely mental. Side by side with the new adjustments to 
which the muscles are constrained with a more and more ready 
obedience, theue must proceed a constantly increased facility in 
the mind's connection and control of the appropriate sensations, 
according to the ends which it intends to accomplish ; i. e., the 
mind in such cases furnishing the real beginnings of the new ad- 
justments and growths of the body. The juggler and the gym- 
nast, the mechanic and the artist, the dancer and the player on 
the violin or the organ, do not simply train the bodily organs to 
the requisite suppleness and aptitudes, but they acquire a sur- 
prising readiness of the mind to connect with every movement 
those sensations which indicate and regulate the activities to which 
the body is physically trained. If a mental facility supposes a 
mental difficulty, what is the nature of the difficulty ? It is an 
original difficulty of mental application to certain mental objects, 
and, consequently in the ready mental combination of the objects 
which are concerned. This intellectual obstacle is usually in- 
creased, and in some cases wholly occasioned, by one that is 
emotional or moral. 

In habits that are purely mental, as in the greater facility that 
is acquired by study in general ; or the surprising progress which 
may be made in any special science, as the mathematics or the 
languages ; or the still more unlooked-for dexterity which may be 
gained in certain intellectual feats, as of punning, rhyming, etc., 
etc., the difficulty lies in a reluctant or unwonted attention, and 
the dexterity pertains to the subjective tendency toward similar 
activities which is acquired by exercise. The difficulty and the 
capacity for facility are both assumed to be unquestioned and 
original facts. 

When the habits are purely emotional or moral, so far as they 
can be conceived as such, the difficulty to be encountered is a 
natural or acquired tendency to excessive and abnormal activity 
in any emotion. This tendency can be overcome only by the 

11* 



250 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §162. 

frequent exercise of other emotions, till they act with normal 
readiness and strength. Leaving out of account the voluntary 
element, or rather supposing that this is lightly adjusted, it may 
be assumed that this original hindrance to the natural tendencies 
remains when the new habits are to be acquired. The completion 
of moral or emotional habits ordinarily involves also the training 
of the intellectual habits to the ready suggestion of new thoughts 
and very often of the body itself to readiness in appropriate 
actions. 

§ 162. The laws of association are again divided 

Higher and . ° 

lower laws of into higher and lower. The lower are those which 

association. k . . . . 

are presented to us in the acquisitions of sense and 
consciousness, and which are reproduced by the representative 
imagination and the uncultured memory. These are the relations 
of time and space. As they are more obvious and natural, they 
require little of higher culture or discipline. They are also 
developed earliest in the order of time, and are common to the 
whole race. The relations of likeness and of contrast form an 
intermediate class between the natural and the philosophical ; 
being now present in the one, and then largely represented in 
the other. The higher are the relations of cause and effect ; in- 
volving means and end, premise and conclusion, datum and infer- 
ence, genus and species, law and example — all, in short, of the 
so-called philosophical or logical relations. All these are present 
in and control the higher imagination and the more developed 
processes of thought. The higher relations of thought and of 
the creative imagination are so diverse from the lower relations 
of sense, that they often supersede and displace, and sometimes 
even cross and contradict them. In sense-perception and con- 
sciousness, objects are conjoined, just as they happen to present 
themselves in space or in time. The mechanical memory or 
imagination servilely reproduces them under precisely the same 
relations in which they were originally presented and known. 
But thought and the higher imagination take the objects thus 
accidentally conjoined, and recombine and reproduce them under 
relations that are higher. Whenever objects are habitually con* 
joined under such relations, they will be persistently associa- 
ted with and represented by them, so far even as to exclude the 
combinations presented to sense-perception. By such excess 



§ 162. CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 251 

those striking idiosyncracies of* imagination and memory can 
be accounted for which are designated by the vaguely-used term, 
absent-mindedness. The absent-minded person is one who has 
become so habitually indifferent and inattentive to the objects 
which address his senses, through preoccupation from a roving 
imagination or abstracted thought, that his senses seem often to 
be unused, and his memory to be utterly untrustworthy. He 
becomes sublimely, or perhaps ridiculously, indifferent to ^he 
common relations of common objects and events. 

As the higher may take the place of the lower relations, so 
the lower may exclude or displace the higher. The constant or 
even the frequent conjunction of objects and phenomena may 
in consequence be mistaken for their necessary relations or 
essential conditions or constituents. A savage, who should see 
gunpowder exploded by an electric spark, would associate the 
whole of the electric apparatus, and perhaps even the words and 
dress of the operator, with the occurrence of the explosion, and 
take the combination to be made by a necessary connection of 
things. The ignoramus who sees a conjurer perform certain ma- 
nipulations, or hears him repeat the words of some incantation in 
connection with a surprising feat, unites the two by an associa- 
tion so inveterate as to believe the one is the cause of the other. 
The manifold and inveterate superstitions that have been so 
readily accepted and so tenaciously retained, are in this way to 
be explained. Startling or noticeable events have occurred 
together by a merely casual connection, which have been hence- 
forward associated under the relations of cause and effect ; as in 
the case of success in battle, the healing of disease, the removal 
of an epidemic, the termination of drought, the cessation of an 
eclipse, or the acceptable performance of some religious rite. 

Nor are errors of this sort confined to uncultu red and ignorant 
races or uneducated men. Men of quick association and ready 
suggestion, even if they attain the highest culture in many di- 
rections, often scorn that discipline to philosophical thinking of 
which they stand in special need, because, from the very quick- 
ness of their power to combine, they are most liable to mistake 
the suggestions of their various and ready wit for the sober and 
jjolid relations of thought. 

The lower associations — those of constant or frequent conjunc 



252 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 162 

tion — are most observable when they strongly affect our feelings. 
Objects which are in themselves indifferent, or which ought to be 
and would otherwise be positively offensive, excite the interned 
liking or misliking, simply because they have been connected 
with objects which in their essential nature are fitted to please 
or displease us. The remembrance of a journey, or some other 
event of our personal history, is always unwelcome, because it 
was connected in our experience, and is therefore associated in 
our thoughts, with some serious disappointment or calamity. 
The sight of the surgeon who saved our life by performing a 
painful operation, is not always agreeable, however sincere may 
be our gratitude. Certain persons are very pleasing or very 
displeasing, because they bring to mind memories or thoughts 
which we cherish or reject. 

A dress of the newest fashion may at first be singular and un- 
attractive. But soon it is generally worn by those who are 
attractive in appearance, graceful and refined in manners, and 
high in social position. It is thereupon regarded as highly graceful 
and agreeable in itself, and no other is tolerable. It is not long 
before it becomes common, and this detracts somewhat from its 
factitious attractions. When it is worn obtrusively by the filthy 
and vulgar, and becomes conspicuous in connection with persons 
who are rightfully disagreeable, it is time that the fashion should 
change, or that some other novelty should appear, in order to 
relieve the associations of the fashionable world from the offen- 
sive taint of commonness and vulgarity. 

The moral influence of accidental associations is still more 
worthy of attention, for their power for evil as well as their 
capacity for good. Pleasing manners, high intellectual culture, 
the attractions of wealth and position, may be and often are 
connected with libertine principles and easy morals, and thus 
become powerful aids and instruments of vice and corruption. 
The drunken revel may, by the force of associations of this kind, 
not only be endured as less disgusting, but it may be gloried in 
by the aspirant after high society, as the sign of gentlemanly 
breeding and fashionable life. The horrors of the first cigar 
and the first debauch are greatly alleviated by manifold sugges- 
tions that the experience of both are necessary to constitute the 
gentleman. 



§ 162. CONDITIONS AND LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. 253 

The force of casual associations is in no particular more con- 
spicuous than in its influence upon language. A deed that is 
abhorrent to the conscience and offensive to the judgment and 
feelings of right-minded and plain-speaking men, is more than 
half reconciled to the moral feelings, and perhaps is installed 
among the virtues, by softening or dignifying the appellations by 
which it is named — that is, by designating it by words that suggest 
associations of respectability and honor. Men seek to keep down 
or to avoid associations of disgust or abhorrence by the device 
of euphemistic terminology. It is not always true that ' vice 
loses half its evil by losing all its grossness ; ' for the very gross- 
ness which is its natural manifestation and result, is sometimes 
the best defence of society against the corruption to which it 
tends. 

The power of epithets and names to awaken pleasant or un- 
pleasant associations is well illustrated in the history of parties 
and the practice of partisans. A party that is encumbered by 
an epithet or appellation of odious associations or disagreeable 
origination, hastens to disencumber itself of an appendage that is 
more fatal than the shirt of Nessus ; while its opponents are as 
eager and determined that it shall retain the damaging reproach. 
The skillful application of epithets like Wliig and Tory, Malig- 
nant and Roundhead, Girondists and the Mountain, Conservative 
and Radical, is often more efficient with the populace than the 
most convincing arguments or the most persuasive eloquence. 
Agreeable associations, through the subtle reaction of language, 
have not only palliated — they have even recommended the most 
contemptible follies, the most outrageous violence, and the most 
abominable crimes. 

Even philosophy herself, though professing to be subject to thought-relations 
only, is by no means exempt from the influence of casual associations operating 
through this same medium of words. It is often more effective, even in the 
schools, to apply an epithet, as sensuous or spiritual, empirical or rational, unsel- 
fish or utilitarian, than it is to disprove an analysis or answer an argument : to 
give an opinion an odious name, or apply a contemptuous epithet, than to con- 
sider its evidence or refute its reasons. The soberest and best-governed men are 
more or less affected by individual associations in their tastes, their preferences, 
their manners, their reading, their companions, their politics, and their faith. 
We could not be wholly aloof or exempt from their influence if we would. We 
would not if we could; for, in so doing, we should forego much of our individu- 
ality, and of that which makes our individuality dear. But it is the interest and 



254 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 163. 

duty of every man so far to regulate the influence of such associations, that he 
do not become the easy victim or the abject slave of chance and arbitrary cir- 
cumstances. "Whatever is right and true cannot be disagreeable, when it is sus- 
tained, adorned, and hallowed by associations that are only attractive. Indeed, 
it is not till the reason and conscience rule so completely over the whole man as 
to transform and elevate even his individual and casual associations, that the 
education of the man is complete, and his character has attained that harmony 
and perfection of which it is capable. 



CHAPTER IV. 



REPRESENTATION. — (1.) THE MEMORY, OR RECOGNIZING FAC- 
ULTY. 

Having considered the conditions and laws of the representa- 
tive power, we proceed to apply the results of our inquiries to the 
explanation of the principal modes in which its activity is ex- 
erted — to the so-called faculties of memory, phantasy, aud imagi- 
nation. The memory comes first in order. 

§ 163. An act or state of memory has already been 
essential to an defined to be that in which the essential elements of 

act of memory. . . . 

an act ol previous cognition are more or less per- 
fectly re-known, with the relations essential to each. These 
elements are not all recalled with the same distinctness, and 
hence there are varieties of memory ; but it is essential to an act 
of memory that some portion of each of these elements and 
relations should be recalled and re-known. 

The total complex of object and relations may be recalled more 
or less perfectly, or each of the constituent elements may be more 
or less vividly represented. 

First : The object of the original act may be recalled with a 
greater or less completeness of its elements or parts, and this 
whether it be a thought-object, or a sense-object. Completeness 
or incompleteness in this particular usually attracts the attention, 
and marks the memory as strong or weak. 

Second : The original act of the mind in the first apprehension 
may also be more or less perfectly recalled. I see a face in a 
crowd. I recall it perfectly, and know that I have seen it before, 
but I cannot revive a single vestige of myself as viewing it, only 



§ 163. REPRESENTATION. — THE MEMORY. 255 

that I did thus view it I am certain by direct knowledge. And 
yet we must have this recollection of our previous psychical 
activity, or we cannot be said to remember it at all. This certain 
knowledge may vary from the vaguest possible impressions of oui 
subjective state, to the most vivid and circumstantial review of 
each one of its constituent elements. 

Third : The time when the object was previously known may 
ibe more or less perfectly recalled. If I remember an object 
viewed or experienced half an hour ago, I may recall the leading 
events which have happened to me from the present moment 
backward to the original act of acquiring this knowledge. If it 
was yesterday, or a month since, I can generally recall the events 
that were just before and after it, can connect it with the present 
by more or fewer intervening occurrences, and can fix the date 
so far as to know that it was in a certain month of a certain 
year ; the attendants of which dates I can recover with more or 
less fulness. 

In some cases, the event stands isolated in the dim and unde- 
termined past. In others, it may not be wholly isolated from the 
events which preceded, accompanied, or followed, but yet it can 
scarcely be said to be united with the present by any connecting 
series of events that intervene. 

Fourth : The place where, may be more or less perfectly re- 
called and recognized. The place where, is a phrase which de- 
notes the adjacent and surrounding physical objects in their spa- 
tial relations, which form the background and the setting of every 
object perceived or every act of the person who remembers. 
Every object previously observed, every act of my own in ob- 
serving it, when itself recalled, will bring back this accompany- 
ing setting more or less perfectly. 

Fifth : The knowledge of the real existence or of the previous 
perception of remembered objects may also vary in the degree of 
accuracy or confidence with which it is held. For this simple 
knowledge no other explanation can be given, than that the 
mind is competent to its exercise. The question is sometimes 
asked, Why do we trust our memory ? To this philosophers have 
sought to give an answer by enumerating certain grounds or cri- 
teria — as that the object must be clear, or that the image recalled 
must represent or agree with the reality. But all these criteria; 



256 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §164 

or grounds, are merely other words or phrases, which express no 
more than the act of knowledge itself. 

But does the mind always know, i. e., remember, with equal 
certainty ? Does it not sometimes distrust its own act in remem- 
bering ? We answer : When we distrust our own act of memory 
it is we ourselves who are not certain. We seek to be certain; 
sometimes we succeed, and pass from the condition of painful 
doubt into that of confident knowledge. The object which was 
vaguely recalled now stands vividly and distinctly before the eye 
of the mind. But the clearness and distinctness of the objects 
are not the real causes which eiFect, or the logical grounds on 
which we rest our positive knowledge. The term distinct and 
distinctly, objectively describe the subjective certainty, but do not 
account for or justify it. 

" But do we not sometimes offer reasons to satisfy or prove to 
ourselves that what we remember must have been a fact ?" We 
do often enumerate the circumstances which assure us that we 
cannot be mistaken, but not as logical reasons to justify the con- 
clusion that we are in the right. We bring them up as particu- 
lars on which we dwell with attention, for the purpose of re- 
creating a more complete and vivid picture of the past. In this 
sense we are said to refresh our memory — as a witness in court is 
asked or urged to do, when one or another circumstance is 
repeated in his hearing, or he is left to his own associations to 
revive the past. We may indeed urge this number of remem- 
bered particulars as reasons why others should trust our accuracy 
because our own remembrance is so full and detailed, but not as 
grounds or criteria for our own confidence. For this confidence 
we can give no other reason than that we find ourselves pos- 
sessed of and using the power for this very function, which is 
to remember. And yet this act is exercised, as is every other act 
of the soul, with varying and unequal energy. 

§ 164. An exact and technical description of mem- 
Memory toch- f 
nicaiiy defined, ory would be the following. Memory is a modihca 

Relation of mo- . 

mory to repre- tion oi representation. Ihe representative power fur- 
nishes the materials for the memory, according to 
the laws of association. These objects being furnished, the mind 
in memory knows them by an act of recognition. More briefly, 
representation recalls, memory recognizes. The soul, in represen- 



§ 164. REPRESENTATION. — THE MEMORY. 257 

tation, is passive, blind, and mechanical, proceeding according to 
fixed and inevitable laws, by methods or processes which occur 
beyond or out of consciousness. The soul, in memory, on the 
other hand, is active, intelligent, and rational. The distinction 
between representation and memory, so far as our actual expe- 
rience is concerned, is rather ideal than real, for representation 
passes into memory by an inevitable certainty, through the easi- 
est, the most natural, and usually the most unnoticed transitions, 

The psychologists of the associational school provide for only 
half the process — that of representation. The recognition they 
attempt to explain, but unsuccessfully, by the chemistry of asso- 
ciation — i. e.j by the union or blending of a present with a past 
mental state. Representation and memory may, however, with 
propriety and advantage, be ideally considered apart. Repre- 
sentation conceived apart from memory, may begin with a mental 
image, and by the laws of its own activity call up another, and 
still another, till all at once the intelligence asserts, "The object 
now pictured I have known before as a reality." Or the object 
may be material, and perceived by the senses. In such a case, 
representation at once supplies a completing image or thought, 
concerning which memory pronounces, " This real object I have 
perceived before." 

Memory, on the other hand, as distinguished from representa- 
tion, is an act of knowledge. To know, requires objects, and the 
discernment of their relations. The objects of memory are 
peculiar, in that, as has just been explained, representation pre- 
sents or suggests more or fewer of them. The relations under 
which they are known are, as we have shown at length, those of 
previous apprehension by myself in some determinate state of 
knowledge or feeling, at some previous time, and in some par- 
ticular place. 

But while we thus distinguish in an ideal way the passive and 
the active element in memory, both must be taken into con- 
sideration in order to explain its phenomena; for, in these 
phenomena, each of these elements modifies the other, and both 
must be present. The two are related in memory somewhat as 
sensation proper and perception proper are combined in the acts 
of sense-perception — the one is inversely as the other. In 
certam acts and powers of memory, the passive or represents 



258 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 165. 

tional element is prominent and conspicuous; in others, the 
active and rational is most apparent. In the two cases, we dis- 
tinguish the memory as spontaneous and intentional. In sponta- 
neous memory, the object remembered, spontaneously occurs to the 
mind. In intentional memory it is distinctly sought after until it is 
found. In spontaneous memory, the representative faculty is 
prominent, while the intelligence w T aits only to give its recognition 
to what is presented to its attention. In intentional memory, 
the intelligence is active, being aware that some object has been 
previously known, to recall which, it summon*, the energies of 
the representative power. 

The distinction of these two kinds of memory is so obvious, 
and is so readily observed, that separate terms for the two have 
been employed in common life, and are found in many lan- 
guages. The Greeks have /tinj/aj and avdfivqai<; ; the Latins, 
memoria and recordatio (cf. Cic. de Prov. 43) ; the English, 
memory and recollection. ■ 

§ 165. In the spontaneous memory, there are 
nu 8 e memory ne natural aptitudes and disabilities, which can only be 
referred to some original differences of the mental 
constitution. That such differences exist, is an unquestioned fact. 
For example : one person hears a series of unconnected names 
recited, and can repeat them all in the precise order in which 
they were uttered, while another can recall only now and then 
one. The eye of another runs down a column of figures, and he 
can copy the whole from memory, while his companion can 
scarcely recall a single one of the whole. One individual can 
learn a page of prose or poetry simply by readiug or hearing it 
read but once, while another can with difficulty repeat correctly a 
single line or sentence. That these differences are natural, is 
manifest from this, that they cannot be remedied by any effort or 
art. No discipline of the attention, and no determination of the 
will, can enable one who is strikingly deficient, to acquire the 
power of this simple and effortless memciry. That the defect lies 
m some original incapacity to fix the attention with interest upon 
the objects to be recalled, and not in the power of representation, 
is confirmed by observation as well as by the general law of the 
workings of the representative power. That the strength or 
weakness of this kind of memory is not owing to the physical 



§ 165. REPRESENTATION. — THE MEMORY. 259 

strength or weakness of the organs of sense, but to the mental 
energy and the moral direction with which these physical instru 
ments are applied, is abundantly manifest. Analogous to differ- 
ences in the spontaneous memory — if, indeed, they are not ex- 
amples of it — are the varying capacities to recall a musical air 
so as to repeat it, or to revive the image of the voice or manners 
of another so as to imitate them. 

The relations which are employed in the natural memory are 
most conspicuously those of simple contiguity and succession. 
All memory begins with these relations, because our earliest en- 
ergies and acquisitions commence with objects of this kind. In 
other words, there is a natural memory of space and of time, or, 
as we may say in a somewhat narrow sense, there is a natural 
memory of the eye and of the ear. In some persons the memory 
of the eye, while in others the memory of the ear, is conspicuous. 
Those who are remarkable for the memory of the eye, are such 
as can readily and vividly picture in the mind the details of the 
front or fag ade of a building, the outline and filling in of some 
remarkable tree, the features of the face of an acquaintance 
or friend, the page of a book as presented to the eye. Those 
distinguished for the memory of the ear, can recall successions of 
sounds — if they have a musical ear, of musical notes — strings of 
names, or words when connected in significant sentences. They 
can repeat dates of uninteresting events, and retail long stories 
whether tedious or amusing. Superiority in the one kind of 
memory is not necessarily accompanied by superiority in the other. 

A good spontaneous memory, or, as it is often called, a good 
memory for facts and dates, is generally and correctly regarded 
as a great intellectual convenience, rather than as a decisive indi- 
cation of intellectual power. It is doubtless true, that many per- 
sons are distinguished by natural memory, who are inferior in ca- 
pacity for discrimination and reasoning. It has become a com- 
mon observation, Great memory, little common sense. In such 
cases, the power of discerning the higher relations may be either 
originally deficient, or it may be neglected in consequence of the 
predominant use of the power of apprehending, and, of course, 
of recalling objects in the relations that are most obvious. A very 
energetic mind may be very limited in its apprehensions, and 
will, of course, be energetic though limited in its memory. It ia 



260 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 165 a, 

noticeable, also, that persons who become eminent in those 
achievements which are proper to the higher intellectual powers 
and relations, are ia early life usually distinguished for the 
strength and reach of their memory of both eye and ear. 

There are not a few men who carry into the maturity of age, 
and into the most striking efforts of judgment and reasoning, a 
memory that is always clear, vivid, pro.upt, exact, and universal 
— a memory that never forgets a name, or loses a date, or is at 
fault in its recital of facts. Such are the men of universal 
knowledge, at least in some special department of study and re- 
search, like Scaliger in ancient learning and criticism; Pascal, 
" that prodigy of parts;" Mebuhr in history and statistics; A. von 
Humboldt in physics both celestial and terrestrial ; Hitter in geo- 
graphy ; G-oethe in literature and art. The reason that in these 
exempt cases the higher or intellectual memory does not displace 
the lower, is that the employments or studies of the individual 
require him to be con versa at with details as well as with their 
thought-relations, with facts as well as with principles. Hence, 
the higher memory aids rather than hinders the lower ; the ac- 
quisitions of the quick eye and ear being fastened and fixed by 
the secondary processes of reflex thought. 

The intentional § 165 a. The phenomena of the so-called intentional 
memory. Qr V0 Xiintary memory next require attention. They 

are characterized by the single feature, that the objects remem- 
bered, are sought for by a conscious effort or act. ' But how 
can this be possible? The very statement involves a contra- 
diction in language and an impossibility in fact. If the mind 
seeks, intending to find or recover an object lost, then it already 
knows what it seeks for. In other words, the mind must already 
have remembered, in order to be put upon the act of endeavor- 
ing to recall.' In reply, we observe that, if every object re- 
membered were in all cases remembered with equal fulness and 
vividness, then the objection would hold. If, in order to re- 
member at all, the mind must recall with equal energy and 
success all which, in the nature of the case, is capable of 
being reproduced, then ' to intend to remember ' would be 
plainly precluded by our ' having already remembered.' But 
this is by no means true. The object remembered may be con« 
aidered as an object — whether object-object or subject-object is 



§165«. REPRESENTATION. — THE MEMORY. 261 

immaterial — out of all conscious relation to the mind viewing or 
caring for it, or as an object in such relation. 

Taken in the first sense, the object is capable of being recalled 
vaguely in its general outlines, and confusedly in its details, or it 
can stand out before the eye of the mind with the sharpest out- 
line, and inclose a perfect picture of distinct minutiae. But the 
object of memory is more appropriately the object in some rela- 
tion to the previous activity of the soul in some given place and 
at some given time. This more complex object admits also of every 
variety and degree, from the lowest up to the highest conceivable 
fulness and freshness. This, of course, provides for the possibility 
that the mind should, in its acts of recovery, go through all the 
intermediate steps of effort and intention, till the whole object, as 
objective and subjective, is fully represented and recognized. 

In recovering the whole, we may begin with that which is 
eminently objective. We may set off with some object which 
we are sure, in our previous knowledge, had some relation to that 
which we seek — as the dates of some events that occurred before 
or after the one which we look for, the names which we have 
learned in connection with the one required ; and we may dwell 
upon these till the date or name required occurs to the mind, and 
we recognize it with welcome. Or we may begin with the sub- 
jective element. We may recall ourselves in the act of being 
charged with certain duties or commissions — where we were, what 
we were doing, of what we were thinking, how we were feeling, — 
till by this means, the missing element reappears to make the 
recognition complete. 

It has already been asserted, that in the intentional memo- 
ry the active element is most prominent. This is true. But it 
happens, from this very circumstance, that the passive element is 
thereby brought into more conspicuous and striking contrast. It 
would seem to delight to tantalize us by the wantonness of its 
caprices, as now it flashes those very thoughts upon our mental 
vision which we are most desirous to hide out of sight, and then 
as provokingly hides those which we are most desirous to un- 
cover. At one time we are disappointed by a strange and 
unaccountable forgetfulness of the most familiar objects; at 
another, we are surprised by the appositeness and the affluence 
of unexpected remembrances. 



262 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §166. 

The sole and single function which the mind, as active, can 
exert, is to apply the force of its attention to the object or objects 
which it is certain have reference to that which is sought for. 
To these only have we access. These only we have at our com- 
mand. Energetic and prolonged attention is all that the mind 
can do at the moment of remembering. 

§ 166. Memory is sometimes defined as exclusively 
powers retain^ the power to retain, or the conservative faculty. So 
Hamilton treats it, and exalts this supposed power 
into a separate faculty co-ordinate with the power to reproduce 
and the power to represent. But when we inquire for the defini- 
tion or statement of the function which this so-called retentive 
faculty performs, we find that no function of the sort is known 
to consciousness. Indeed, it is conceded by Hamilton, that what- 
ever is done by this faculty is performed unconsciously. 

No one holds that, during the interval, the mind acts upon 
the object, or with respect to it. It does not exert itself to hold 
it, or concern itself with it in the least. The expression to re- 
tain is purely metaphorical, and simply carries the thoughts 
over the period that intervenes between the moment when it was 
first apprehended, and the moment when it is known a second 
time. As Locke pertinently and truly observes, " This laying 
up of our ideas in the repository of the memory signifies no 
more than this, that the mind has a power, in many cases, to 
revive perceptions which it has once had, with this additional 
perception annexed to them, that it has had th^m before. And 
in this sense it is that our ideas are said to be in our memories, 
when, indeed, they are actually nowhere ; but only there is an 
ability in the mind, when it will, to revive them again,'' etc. (E:« 
say B. ii., c. x., § 2). 

It is only by a metaphor that objects remembered can be spoken 
of as preserved in some repository or hiding-place, in drawers, 
pigeon-holes, or other compartments. Nor can the doctrine be 
maintained, that in the act of original acquisition the fibres of 
the brain are disposed in a certain position, which they retain, or 
at least retain the tendency to reassume. Nor can it be proved, 
as the followers of Herbart contend, that each object as appro 
hended, or the state of mind as excited to action by the object, 
is retained ever afterward in a condition of tension, which, on a 



§ 166. REPRESENTATION. — THE MEMORY. 263 

fit occasion, springs forth into the presence of the conscious spirit. 
Now, if all these representations are figurative or metaphorical, 
the power to retain, or the doctrine of a retentive faculty, must 
be purely figurative also ; the fact which it describes being 
merely that under certain conditions, and in obedience to certain 
laws, the mind can represent and recognize its previous know- 
ledge. The mind that can do this in regard to the greatest 
number of objects, after the lapse of the longest time, is said to 
have the most retentive memory. 

Cicero (De Oratore, i., 5), Plato and others, have compared the mind in pre- 
serving what it had knuwn, to a tablet on which characters were impressed or 
engraved. Notwithstanding the cautious and accurate definition of Locke which 
we have cited, we find him, in the same chapter, indulging in such language as 
this : " The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colors, and, if not 
sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear." .... "In some, it [the mind] re- 
tains the characters drawn on it like marble; in others like freestone; and in 
others, little better than sand.'' . . . . " We oftentimes find a disease quite strip 
the mind of all its ideas, and the flames of a fever in a few days calcine all those 
images to dust and confusion, which seemed to be as lasting as if graved in 
marble." Again, the ideas are, "very often roused and tumbled out of their 
dark cells into open daylight by some turbulent and tempestuous passion." 
Hamilton justly observes, that, "of all these sensible resemblances, none is so 
ingenious as that of Gassendi to the folds of a piece of paper or cloth/' But 
Hamilton does not notice wherein the truth and ingenuity of the resemblance 
mainly lies, viz., the circumstance that the mind, like the cloth, retains nothing 
but the capacity to assume the same folds and in the same combination and order 
which they had originally taken. 

We observe here, that as the goodness of the memory may 
respect it as spontaneous or intentional ; so we describe it in the 
one case as ready, and in the other as tenacious. The one does 
not exclude the other. If a person is able to recall every object 
that is required, at once, without eflbrt or delay, his memory is 
called ready ; but it is not necessarily implied thereby that he is 
deficient in the capacity to retain, but only that he is quick and 
apt to recall. On the other hand, when one is slow to recall, 
and yet sure to do so by the application of energetic attention 
if sufficient time is allowed, his memory is tenacious ; by which 
is intended only that the object is certain to be recovered — not 
that there is a special capacity to retain, which may be possessed 
in eminent measure, to which may or may not be added another 
special capacity to recall. 

The power to retain, in the sense explained, implies the powej 



264 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§I6d 



to lose, in the same sense; the capacity to remember, suggests 
that there is the liability to forget. The fact that we do forget, 
most men will not venture to question or deny. It is not, how- 
ever, easy to explain why we forget, or to detail the process by 
which we lose an acquisition beyond recall. In one aspect of the 
case, it would seem that we ought never to remember — that the 
mind might be supposed to be limited to the contemplation of 
the new objects which the preseatative power can bring before 
it. But when we have become acquainted with the possibility 
and the conditions of representation, it would seem that we 
ought to forget nothing, but that it must always be within the 
reach of every related thought to bring back all its correlates. 
A moment's reflection, however, must convince us that, were it 
possible for us to recall every object, the recall could never in 
fact take place simply for want of time. To recall the acquisi- 
tions of a few years, would require as long a time as to make the 
original acquirement, even if to represent were our sole occupa- 
tion. But it is not solely for lack of time or opportunity that 
we do not recall. Often, when both are furnished, the related 
thoughts do not spontaneously present themselves. 

The phrase to forget is variously employed — sometimes posi- 
tively, at others comparatively ; now absolutely, and then rela- 
tively; or, as Stiedenroth has it, "Forgetting admits of several 
degrees, or stadia. The first is a momentary displacement of an 
object apprehended which is yet certain to spring back as soon 
as the object displacing it is withdrawn. The second is a com- 
parative withdrawal of the attention, as when we divert our 
mind from a painful sensation, or, as we say, forget it, in labor 
or play. The third is when an object will not present itself 
spontaneously, but we must bethink ourselves in order to recover 
it. The fourth is when we bethink ourselves in vain. The fifth 
is when it has vanished for so long a time that we question 
whether we can by any effort bring it back. The sixth, when 
we conclude that it is absolutely certain that we shall never 
recall it again." (Psycho logle, Berlin, 1824, p. 82). 

It is questioned by many whether this absolute forgetfulness is 
possible — whether, at least, we are authorized to affirm that the 
soul can lose beyond recovery any thing which it has known. It 
is certain that knowledge which has remained out of sight for a 



§ 167. REPRESENTATION. THE MEMORY. 265 

long period has often been suddenly recovered. Even acquisi- 
tions that were the least likely to be remembered, and which, 
previously, were never known or suspected to have been made, 
come up as though the soul were inspired to receive strange re- 
velations of its capacities and acquirements. 

Numerous examples have occurred within the observation of 
the curious, and not a few are recorded in history. The well- 
known and often quoted story, which was originally published by 
Coleridge in his BLograpliia L'terarla, is in substance as follows: 
A servant-girl in Germany was very ill of nervous fever accom- 
panied with violent delirium. In her excited ravings, she re- 
cited long passages from classical and rabbinical writers, which 
excited the wonder and even terror of all who heard them, the 
most of whom thought her inspired by e, good or evil spirit. 
Some of the passages which were written down were found to 
correspond with literal extracts from learned books. When in- 
quiries were made concerning the history of her life, it was 
found that, several years before, she had lived in the family of 
an old and learned pastor in the country, who was in the habit 
of reading aloud favorite passages from the very writers in 
whose works these extracts were discovered. These sounds, to 
her unintelligible, were so distinctly impressed upon her memory, 
that, under the excitement of delirious fever, they were repro- 
duced to her mind and uttered by her tongue. 

Rev. Timothy Flint, in his Recollections, records of himself, 
that, when prostrated by malarial fever, he repeated aloud long 
passages from Virgil and Homer which he had never formally 
committed to memory, and of which, both before and after his 
illness, he could repeat scarcely a line. 

Dr. Rush, in his Medical Inquiries, says that he once attended 
an Italian, who died in New York of yellow fever, who at first 
spoke English, at a later period of his illness French, and, when 
near his end, Italian only. He records also that he was in- 
formed by a Lutheran clergyman, that old German immigrants 
whom he attended in their last illness, often prayed in their 
native tongue, though some of them, he was certain, had not 
spoken it for many years. 

§ 167. Such facts illustrate the connection of the K* 1000 " 
bodily condition with the phenomena of memory, of which a 



266 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§167. 



partial explanation has already been given (§ 153). They con- 
firm two pjsitions, to which daily experience and observation 
both testify. The first is, that the extent and reach of our 
memory is greatly affected by our bodily condition at the time 
when we acquire. Every object which we apprehend, when in a 
certain condition of health, we can afterward recall, and this we 
can do as readily and as easily as we breathe. On other occa- 
sions, if we are wearied by labor, exhausted by watching, or 
prostrated by pain, the book which we read, the conversation in 
which we take part, the incidents which happen, become almost a 
blank to us when we seek to recover them. 

It is in place here to notice the circumstance, that certain parts 
of the day, and, with some persons, certain seasons of the year, 
are most favorable to the successful acquisition of possessions for 
the memory. In the evening, and especially late aft night, the 
attention may seem to be as intently fixed upon the objects which 
are to be retained, as in the morning, and the intellectual force 
may appear to be more energetic. But it not infrequently hap- 
pens that the acquisitions of the previous evening, which seemed 
to be so distinct and promised to be so permanent, have well-nigh 
vanished in the morning, and require to be reviewed to be made 
useful or sure. It is easy to see how, after the analogies furnished 
by these phenomena, can be explained the frequently evanescent 
character of the acquisitions which are made under the influence 
of wine or opium, as also the fact that the men of the strongest 
memories have often been either water-drinkers, or men of strong 
heads, not easily disturbed by stimulants. 

The second position is, that, whether we can recall what w r e 
may be said to have acquired, depends also very largely — at times 
altogether — upon the bodily condition at the moment of our de- 
sire or effort to remember. Under the inspiration of joyous 
health or the stimulus of exciting disease, all that we have ever 
experienced, witnessed, or learned, comes back to us as if a good 
genius were pouring forth at our bidding all that we need or de- 
sire to recall. Again, in seasons of extreme weakness, we can* 
not recover the most familiar names, incidents, or dates, and out 
most common knowledge refuses to serve us. 

It is pertinent here to refer to the many cases of the sudden 
and almost entire loss of memory, some of which are as striking 



§ 167. REPRESENTATION. — THE MEMORY. 267 

as those of its development to unwonted energy. A lady of su- 
perior endowments and culture was for several days exposed t<* 
suffering and fear, in a storm at sea which terminated in the 
wreck of the vessel. A severe and protracted illness was the 
consequence, from which she slowly recovered. After her ap- 
parent restoration to complete health, it was found that the hest 
part of her acquired knowledge was gone, and it was never af- 
terward recovered. An attack of apoplexy has been said to ef- 
face all remembrance of the events of some definite period of 
the life. 

Both classes of facts — those which illustrate the dependence 
on certain bodily conditions of both the power to acquire with 
effect the materials for the memory, and the power to recall 
them with ease — can be accounted for by the general views al- 
ready expressed. The varying condition of the body through 
the several sensations of which it is the occasion, enters into the 
experiences of consciousness, and furnishes a most important ele- 
ment in them all. It is the constant background on which all 
the mental activities are projected, the never-failing setting with 
which every one of them must be accompanied. When these 
sensations are of a certain description, they are the normal and 
favoring accessories of the other actings of the soul. If they 
are abnormal, disturbed, or unpleasant, the mind is so absorbed 
or distracted by the presence of these obtrusive sensations, that 
it has little energy to spare for other objects, and no capacity to 
steady the attention upon them. 

Again, the bodily condition may also present sensations which 
so far disturb and distract the attention, as to allow no time for 
the passive memory to respond to any call ; may so hurry the 
mind from one object of present sense-experience to another, as 
to leave no opportunity for the representing power to thrust in a 
single mental image ; or, again, these sensations may be so utterly 
lissimilar to any which have been before experienced, as to sug- 
gest no image of the past. Or, on the other hand, this com* 
plex of sensations may be most favorable to the easy and almost 
exclusive action of the passive or spontaneous memory, and may 
be so akin to the states which we would recall, as to be all lu* 
urinous and living with objects that suggest those which we wel« 
some or seek after. 



268 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 168. 

To the question, whether the circumstances of the soul can 
ever so far be changed as to empower it to recover all the past, 
the analogies suggested by these facts would lead us to reply : 
(1.) Under no circumstances whatever can it be supposed that 
the soul shall recover what it has not in some sense made its own 
by the energetic action of its attentive consideration. That is not 
a proper object of memory to the soul, which has not been taken 
up into its life by its efficient acquisition. (2.) It is supposable 
that the conditions might be furnished of recalling all the past 
thus defined, under the actings of laws which are well known to 
us. We have only to suppose that a vehicle or subject of the 
required psychical experiences — call them sensations, if you will, 
and the occasion of them a new body — should be furnished, and 
these would of themselves give back every element of past ac- 
quisition or experience to which they might be analogous. 

§ 168. With the progress and development of the 
m^oryThow powers and activities of the soul, the memory itself 
explained. advances through separate stages, each of which pre- 
pares the way for that which follows, and becomes its natural and 
logical condition. The memory of the infant differs from the 
memory of the child ; the memory of the child differs from that 
of the youth ; the memory of the man, in each of the several 
stages of active life, differs from that in the stage which succeeds 
it. In general, the memory of the person in active life differs 
from the memory of old age. The memory of the artist is very 
unlike the memory of the mathematician. The memory of the 
erudite and disciplined thinker differs greatly in its objects and 
its laws, from the memory of the person who has had little cul- 
ture from reading or thought. Hence, there exist many clearly 
distinguishable varieties of memory ; if we make nothing of the 
fact that every individual must have a type of memory which 
arises from those individual habits of thought and feeling which 
he can share with no other person. 

Besides those varieties of memory which are common to all 
men in the successive periods of their life, there are the special 
peculiarities which result from one's pursuit or profession. The 
historian remembers facts and dates ; the philosopher, principles 
and laws. The artist remembers landscapes and faces ; the wit 
smd the story-teller, never forget a successful jest or a capital 



§ 168. REPRESENTATION. — THE MEMORY. 269 

anecdote. These habits of memory, as they are called, often 
grow stronger till they become fixed beyond the power of change. 
Persons distinguished for great intellectual power in certain 
directions, very often complain of a serious defect of memory 
which they cannot account for. Such one-sided habits and d& 
fects are not peculiar to the memory only, but pertain equally to 
all the activities of the soul : the condition of memory is energy 
in the original activities ; these involve attention to the objects to 
be remembered ; attention springs from an active interest in 
these objects ; this prevailing interest follows the habits which 
constitute and express the character. 

We return again to the fact that these varieties of memory are 
not only distinguished by the character of the objects remem- 
bered, but also by the method and relations under which they 
are recalled. The things which the child remembers not only 
differ from those which an older person recalls, but they are re- 
called in a child's order, and by the relations which are proper 
to a child. The same is true of the devotee to any study or pur- 
suit so far as special intellectual habits are induced by such a 
study or employment. When the child recalls to itself or recites 
to others a series of incidents of which it has had experience, it 
depicts the whole, generally in the order of time, with little selec- 
tion of materials according to their importance or their relation 
to any principle or purpose. The spontaneous memory of the 
eye or the ear, reproduces the past solely after the relations of 
time or place, with no rearrangement or selection of the same, 
such as would be suggested by the desire for the clearer appre- 
hension of the hearer, or by the bearings of the story upon his 
intellect or his feelings. 

This is very conspicuous in the memories, and especially in the 
narratives of uneducated persons. Thus, Dame Quickly recites 
the story of her wrongs in the following fashion : " Thou didst 
swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my dolphin 
chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday 
in Whitsun-week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his 
father to a singing-man of Windsor ; thou didst swear to me 
then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me 
my lady thy wife." (Henry IV., 2d part, Act ii., scene i. ; cf. S. T. 
Coleridge, The Friend, Sec. ii., Essay iv.) No finer opportunity 



270 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 168, 

*s furnished for observing this variety in the order and method 
which characterize the memories of different persons, than in lis- 
tening to the testimony of different witnesses in a court of jus- 
tice, concerning the same transaction. 

The memory of the young is usually more ready ; that of the 
adult is more tenacious. This is, in part, owing to the greater 
physical vivacity of youth, which affects the actings of the soul. 
The vivacious old man is as quick to remember as he is to appre- 
hend or judge; while the torpid and phlegmatic child is as slow 
in his memory as he is in his reasonings and inferences. The 
difference, however, is not merely a difference of temperament or 
animal spirits, but has its ground in the character of the relations 
which usually predominate at each of these periods of life. Ob- 
jects that are recalled by the relations of space and time and of 
obvious resemblance, present themselves promptly, if they are 
remembered at all; but these relations are, from their very 
nature, limited to but few individual objects. Hence, the groups 
which are connected by such relations are sooner set aside and 
forgotten, and are displaced by others. The relations of thought, 
however, especially those which are founded on wide-reaching 
principles or laws, are in their very nature less obvious. But, 
on the other hand, the principles themselves are few, and are 
constantly before the mind. When these are once mastered, they 
are illustrated in every fact; they are exemplified in every 
instance. By means of them we can prophesy and construct the 
future as well as explain and interpret the past. These few 
bonds of association, when they control the memory, give to it 
perfect security in and command over its possessions. 

The men of universal memory are those who combine most 
happily the ready memory of facts and events with the te- 
nacious memory of truths and laws. They are those whose 
spontaneous memory is not displaced, but rather aided, by the 
development of the rational memory which sees in facts the 
illustrations of the higher relations of philosophic truth. They 
hold fast the acquisitions of youth and of old age by the perma- 
nence of principles which are as old as the universe and as new 
as the latest experiment by which they are verified. 

The memory of the ancients, if we may believe all the stories 
which are told of the achievements of some of their more dis- 



§ 168. REPRESENTATION. THE MEMORY. 271 

tinguished men, surpassed, in some respects, the average attain- 
ments of the moderns. It is not difficult to believe this to have 
been true, from what we know of the memory of those who most 
resemble them in the circumstances of their lives, and the disci- 
pline of their intellects. Their attention was far less distracted by 
a variety of objects than is the case with the moderns. The facts 
in science, literature, chronology, and history, which they were 
required to remember were far fewer than those which burden 
the memory of the modern scholar. More than all, they relied 
far less than we do upon writing, memoranda, and books, to 
preserve what they desired to retain. They committed their 
acquisitions to their own power to recall them. Conversation 
and repetition were practiced far more generally by them than 
by us. What was heard by the ear from the living teacher, was 
repeated and discoursed of by his interested scholars, till it 
became a part of their very being. 

The attention of the infant is at first occupied with the sensible 
world. It sees colors which delight the eye, it hears sounds which of^JmorTlts 
captivate the ear. It is long before it unites these separate per- characteristics 
cepts into individual objects, and still longer before it discrimi- per i 0( i s f iif e . 
nates, by special attention, one object from another. Later still, 
it learns to notice with any effect its own inner experiences and activities. The 
relations of before and now are of still later evolution. But all these separate 
elements must be familiarized by attention before an act of memory can be at all 
definite and complete, inasmuch as, whatever suggestions of representation 
there may be, there ean be no proper act of memory till all these elements are 
recognized. 

The germinant memory of the infant must be exceedingly limited, because its 
materials are very scanty ; the chief force of its intellectual life being expended 
in acquiring rather than in recalling. So far as it remembers at all, its memory 
is passive ; intentional memory being as yet undeveloped, for the infant is the 
passive child of nature, and the stream of its memory runs side by side with the 
course of its objective life. The infant remembers, as animals remember, just 
that, and only that, which the objects of sense-perception recall to their 
thoughts. 

The acquisition and the use of language opens the way for the higher memory, 
though obviously in its first beginnings. The right use of words, and of short 
sentences, requires that the child should connect names with distinctly discerned 
objects, and should express its wishes and thoughts by short sentences. .But 
by-and-by the child finds that it forgets— that it has not the knowledge which it 
once possessed. It cannot recall the right name or phrase which it wishes to use, 
and which it knows it has previously spoken. It is impelled by its wishes to re- 
call the forgotten object, and begins to practice the arts of the intellectual, or ac- 
tive memory. But these occasions and efforts are at best so infrequent, and of so 
little importance, that they train the intentional memory in a slight degree only. 



272 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 169. 

It is by tasks imposed by others directly and indirectly, that the soul is disciplined 
to the exercise of this higher memory, and its various activities are developed. 
The child is taught written language. It learns the alphabet and spelling by the 
eye, or brief sentences or verses by the ear. Children are charged also with com- 
missions to execute, with services of labor or courtesy which may not be forgot- 
ten, and with endless lessons from books to prepare and repeat. 

By degrees, this pupil of others becomes his own taskmaster : he passes from 
the lower discipline of the memory, which others enforce, to the higher, which 
he imposes upon himself. The intentional memory, which has been trained by 
others, he cultivates for himself. He makes his own purposes; he proposes his 
own ideals ; he knows what he must learn in order to accomplish these purposes 
and to realize these ideals; he appoints to himself his own lessons; tasks his own 
intellect to consider, and his own efforts to retain what he foresees he shall have 
occasion to know and to have at command. According as this training of the 
attention is more or less complete, so does his memory become more or less per- 
fectly subject to his control, and from the passive spontaneity of early life, passes 
into the active energy of maturer years. This memory of manhood is also char- 
acterized by the predominance of thought-relations and of rational purposes. 
The spontaneous memory of early life is not thereby displaced ; the original apti- 
tudes of the memory of both eye and ear are not necessarily set aside. But just 
so far as one thinks and acts like a man, just so far will he remember as a man, 
and not merely as a child — that is, by the aid of those higher relations which 
thought requires, and which definite aims and rational activities necessarily in- 
volve. The memory of the man is not only intentional, but it is also rational. 

When the man advances from the busy noon toward the quiet evening of lifo, 
his exclusive interest in the objects which have absorbed his manhood is relaxed, 
either through physical infirmity, or the success which satiates, and perhaps the 
disappointment which wearies a man with life. In place of an intent and ab- 
sorbed devotedness to the present, there is a more frequent review of the past. 
Old scenes are described, old books are read, old companions are talked of, old 
stories are repeated. For this reason, recent objects are so readily forgotten, and 
the singular contrast is furnished in the memory peculiar to the aged — most tena- 
cious of objects and events that occurred longest ago, and readily forgetful, if te- 
nacious at all, of those that were most recent. 

The education § 169. The methods of education should recognise 
of the memory. ^e w j ge arran gements of nature in developing 
and maturing the memory. In the earlier periods of life the 
spontaneous memory should be stimulated and enriched by 
appropriate studies. The child should learn stories, verses, 
poems, facts, and dates, as freely and as accurately as it can be 
made to respond to such tasks. During this early and objective 
period, it should learn as many languages as is possible in the 
circumstances, or as is desirable for its future pursuits. Espe- 
cially should it learn those languages which can be taught in 
conversation, or acquired by contact with those who speak them 



§ 170. REPRESENTATION. — THE MEMORY. 273 

freely and well. If the elements of the ancient languages are 
taught so early in life, they should be taught, as far as in the 
nature of the case is possible, by similar methods. But as the 
higher and rational powers awake to action, every acquisition 
that has been made by the lower and more obvious associations, 
should be secured against loss by recasting it and relearning 
it as it were, after the relations which are higher and more philo- 
sophical. English children who learn to speak French, German, 
or Italian fluently in early life, may lose their acquisitions 
almost entirely, unless these are fixed by a grammatical study of 
the same languages at a later period of life. The large 
accumulations of facts and dates, as in geography and history, 
which are made very early by many carefully-trained children, 
and with the greatest ease on their part, are liable to be effaced, 
and, as it were, swept clean out from the memory, unless they 
are secured against loss by reviewing and rearranging them 
under the new and higher relations which the development of 
the reason makes possible. 

On the other hand, to anticipate the development of the re- 
flecting powers, by forcing upon the intellect studies which 
imply and require these capacities, is to commit the double error 
of misusing the time which is especially appropriate to simple 
acquisition, and of constraining the intellect to efforts which are 
untimely and unnatural. The modern practice of occupying the 
minds of children with the reasons of things, i. e., with laws, 
principles, etc., in the form of compends of astronomy, natural or 
mental philosophy, natural theology, etc. — is one that cannot be 
too earnestly deprecated, or too soon abandoned by those who 
would train the mind according to the methods of nature. 

§ 170. The cultivation of the memory is a subject 
which has been earnestly discussed by many writers, tion e of" u™ 
and is of practical interest to all those who are bent moScsf' ^ me " 
on self-improvement, or are devoted to the education 
of others. Many complain of a general defect of memory 
Others are especially sensible of painful failures in respect to 
certain classes of objects, as names, dates, facts of history, 
sentences or passages from authors familiarly read. The question 
is often anxiously propounded, How can these general or specif 
defects be overcome ? 

12* 



274 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 170 

The conclusions which we have reached in respect to the nature 
and laws of memory, suggest the only practical rules which can 
be attained. These rules may be summed up in the directions : 
' To remember any thing, you must attend to it ; and in order U 
attend, you must eitrer find or create an interest in the objects to 
be attended to. This interest must, if possible, be felt in the 
objects themselves, as directly related to your own wishes, feel- 
ings, and purposes, and not to some remote end on account of 
which you desire to make the acquisition.' It should never be 
forgotten, that in memory, the soul can recall no more than it 
makes its own — no more than, in acquiring, it constructs or 
creates as a spiritual product by its own activity. 

The late Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton advised his sons in the 
following golden words : " What you do know, know thoroughly. 
There are few instances in modern times of a rise equal to that 
of Sir Edward Sugden. After one of the Weymouth elections, 
I was shut up with him in a carriage for twenty-four hours. I 
ventured to ask him, What was the secret of his success ; his 
answer was: 'I resolved, when beginning to read law, to make 
every thing I acquired perfectly my own, and never to go to a 
second thing till I had entirely accomplished the first. Many of 
my competitors read as much in a day as I read in a week ; but, 
at the end of twelve months, my knowledge was as fresh as on 
the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their 
recollection.' " (Memoirs of Sir Thomas F. Buxton, chap, xxiv.) 

Numerous devices have been contrived in order to aid the 
mind so to make its acquisitions as to secure them against loss, 
and to bring them readily to hand when required. They were 
not unknown to the ancients, as is evident from Cicero, De Or y 
ii., 86-88; Ad Herenn., iii., 16-24; Quinct, Imtit, x^ 1, 11-26. 
They all rest upon a common assumption or principle, viz., that 
it is possible, by means of arbitrary associations, so to connect 
what one desires to remember with a series or scheme of objects, 
artificially arranged or actually existing, that they can be readily 
and certainly suggested to the mind. Some teachers of mnemon- 
ics employ a scheme of geometrical figures, as squares or tri- 
angles. For example : if a person, in listening to a discourse oi 
lecture, should, as the speaker proceeds, connect the leading 
thoughts or divisions with the panes of glass in a window-sash, 



§170. REPRESENTATION. — THE MEMORY. 275 

or with the panels of a door, he would avail himself of the geome« 
trical method, which addresses the eye, through the space-relations 
of visible objects. Often these systems have sought to aid the 
memory of dates by the letters of the alphabet; each pre- 
senting some number, and being employed in forming artificial 
syllables, such as could be readily attached to names of persons or 
places distinguished in history. Mnemonic verses and tables 
have been furnished for many of the important objects with 
which every student is expected to be familiar, as the names of 
the sovereigns of the great kingdoms and empires, grammatical 
paradigms and rules, logical formulae, etc., etc. 

A correct estimate of the value of all artificial memory may 
be summed up as follows : The natural, as opposed to the artifi- 
cial memory, depends on the relations of sense and the relations 
of thought,— the spontaneous memory of the eye and the ear 
availing itself of the obvious conjunctions of objects which are 
furnished by space and time ; and the rational memory, of those 
higher combinations which the rational faculties superinduce upon 
these lower. The artificial memory proposes to substitute for the 
natural and necessary relations under which all objects must 
present and arrange themselves, an entirely new set of relations 
that are purely arbitrary and mechanical, which excite little or 
no other interest than that they are to aid us in remembering. 

It follows, that if the mind tasks itself to the special effort of 
considering objects under these artificial relations, it will give 
less attention to those which have a direct and legitimate interest 
for itself. Its energies, instead of following in easy obedience the 
leadings of nature, will be forced to efforts that are constrained 
and artificial. Whatever dexterity is acquired by these intellec- 
tual gymnastics, must be gained at the expense of that rhythmical 
power which always rewards those activities in vhich art follows 
nature. The wonderful feats of memory which are occasionally 
adduced as resulting from the latest new device in mnemonics, 
are the fruits of much time, labor, and enthusiasm. Had the 
same time, labor, and enthusiasm been expended in acquiring 
knowledge by means of the ordinary appliances, the acquisitions 
would have been many times more valuable for the culture of the 
powers and the uses of life. Perhaps even the number of facts 
recorded in the memory would have been as numerous. 



276 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



170. 



There are occasions when the artificial memory is unquestion- 
ably useful. It may serve a good purpose in holding before the 
mind facts which it is important to remember, when neither the 
facts themselves, nor their relations, present attractions which 
are strong enough to fix or hold the attention. For the man 
whose intellectual force and interest are preoccupied, it is often 
difficult to apply the memory with success to such objects, unless 
they are arranged in some novel relations. The artificial 
memory comes to his aid, and offers the service and assistance of 
art to supplement the failing forces of nature ; to reenforce, and as 
it were, to renew the spontaneous memory by novel appliances. 

But while we concede a certain advantage to the artificial 
memory under circumstances like these, we must still hold, with 
Coleridge (Biog. Literaria, chap, vii.), that, for the ordinary 
uses of the student, sound logic, a healthy digestion, and a quiet 
conscience are the proper conditions or arts of memory. 

By sound logic, is, of course, intended a well-balanced and 
well-trained intellect, which by original structure and discipline, 
is capable of fixed attention, clear apprehension, and excited 
interest. Without these conditions, a strong and trustworthy 
memory is impossible. 

A healthy digestion is also requisite ; for if the digestion is dis- 
turbed, the action of the mind will be distracted by those vague 
sensations of depression and discomfort which are inconsistent 
with that harmonious interaction of the powers of the whole 
man, which is indispensable to a good memory. Even though 
it happens that persons in this condition are capable of extra- 
ordinary energy in their mental efforts, these occasions are yet 
certain to be followed by longer periods of listlessness and de- 
pression which exclude that repetition and review of the know- 
ledge which are quite as essential as energy and interest at the 
time of the original acquisition. 

A clear or quiet conscience is also a prime requisite, for a simi- 
lar reason. Indigestion and intoxication of any kind disturb 
the memory by intrusive, uncomfortable, and exciting sensa- 
tions. But the consciousness of guilt haunts the spirit with 
disquieting self-reproach, and fear of deserved punishment. 
Feelings of this sort do indeed often stamp upon the memory 
a few impressions that are ineffaceable. But for this very 



§ 170. REPRESENTATION. — THE MEMORY. 277 

reason it is the more unfitted to attend with interest or enthu- 
siasm to other objects, and its movements in all directions are 
enfeebled or depressed by distraction or constraint. 

It is natural, in this connection, to notice the moral conditions 
of a good memory. The man who would have a strong and 
trustworthy memory, must always be true to it in his dealings 
with himself and with other men. He must paint to his own im- 
agination, with scrupulous fidelity, whatever he has witnessed or 
experienced. He must never so yield to the bias of interest or 
passion, as to strive to persuade himself, even for a moment, that 
events were different from what he knows they actually were. 
He must seek to repeat to others the precise words of what he 
has heard or read, whenever he makes communications by lan- 
guage. Such a moral discipline to internal and external honesty, 
both implies and enforces a mental discipline to earnest and 
wide-reaching attention — an attention which does complete 
justice to every object that comes before it, and which neither 
slights nor omits any thing which ought to be brought to view. 
An intellect that is regulated and held to its duties by the 
tension of such a purpose, will act with the precision and cer- 
tainty of clock-work. Its recoi lections will be trusted by others, 
because they are trusted by the person himself, and for the best 
of reasons — because he is true to what he remembers. 

On the other hand, a person who is false to his feilow-men, 
ill often weaken his confidence in his own intellect, and may 
end with an incapacity to distinguish falsehood from the truth 
What he does not like to remember, he will persuade himself 
did not actually happen, or, at least, not in every particular as 
it spontaneously presents itself to his view. Then follows, by 
natural consequence, distrust of his own memory, because he is 
not sure that the materials are at hand with which he can cor= 
rect his own omissions. The next step is, under the excitement 
of strong passion, to persuade himself that what he desires 
should be true, did really occur, or was really written or said. 
If he asserts this by his own word, he is the more strongly com- 
mitted to believe it. At last, he becomes so false to the work- 
ings of his own memory, that he dares not trust it himselfl 

It is well to remember, that, while the liar has more pressing 
need of a good memory than any other man, he is of all men 
the least likely to possess it. 



278 THE HUMAN INTELLECT- § 171 

CHAPTER V. 

REPRESENTATION. (2.) THE PHANTASY, OR IMAGING POWER, 

From perfect memory, we pass through the several forms and 
degrees of imperfect memory till we come to the phantasy. 

§ 171. The phantasy, or imaging power, is that 
fiue<i and ihuo- form of representation which brings before the mind's 
apprehension objects, or, more exactly, images, as 
such, severed from all relations of place, time, or previous cogni- 
tion. The best example of the exercise of this power is furnished 
in dreaming. In what are called the abnormal or disordered 
states of the soul — as somnambulism, and the various types and 
degrees of insanity — the phantasy has a more or less complete 
control. Among the wakeful and normal states of the soul, 
reverie is the purest and the most perfect example of phantasy. 
The fewer the relations to the past or the present which the objects 
suggest, the more complete is the working of the phantasy. In 
earliest infancy this power may be supposed to be active, for the 
reason that the mind has not yet reached a condition in which 
memory proper is possible. In extreme old age also, when the 
incapacity to attend to single objects for a long continuance pre- 
cludes intelligent and effective perception, memory, or thought, 
the phantasy may still survive, and actively call up the pictures 
of the past, simply as pictures, each recalling the next, according 
to the conditions and laws already explained. In the wakeful 
and earnest periods of the mind's activity, the exercise of simple 
phantasy is precluded, for the obvious reason, that at such times 
the mind is intent upon some rational object, which lifts it above 
the condition of the passive recipience or contemplation of pic- 
tures. And yet, with the higher activities, there are not infre- 
quently mingled those approaching to pure phantasy. When 
one object suggests another in a train of associations, many may 
be recalled without a single distinct act of remembrance, and yet 
every one may be a transcript from some reality experienced in 
the past. Each is recalled, however, not as a remembered or 
recognized object, but simply as an image. When the highel 



§ 172. REPRESENTATION. — THE PHANTASY. 279 

functions of the soul are wholly, or in part, put in abeyance, as 
in fainting, fatigue, or sleep, or when there is bodily weakness, or 
any disturbance of the nervous equilibrium, as in fever, delirium 
or excitement from liquor or narcotics, or even in protracted 
sleeplessness, the phantasy asserts a more or less complete 
dominion. The mind is visited with throngs of pictures, which 
rush so rapidly by as to confuse it by their very swiftness, and to 
oppress it by a sense of its own impotence to arrest or direct 
their course. When this condition is permanent, the mind is 
said to be the victim of phantasy. Such a state is also called a 
state of distraction — which term describes the mind's incapacity 
to fix the attention or detain its flitting images long enough 
to allow the exercise of the functions of rational memory, in- 
vention or thought. 

§172. These conditions of the soul are grave prob- The interest of 
lems to the psychologist. Three suppositions may be its P roblems - 
made in respect to them all: — (1.) These states may be said to be 
simply abnormal or irregular, recognizing and obeying no law. 
(2.) They may be set down as simply inexplicable; suggesting 
the existence of laws which cannot be discovered. (3.) They 
may be explained in great part by the usually recognized laws 
of the soul in its normal and wakeful condition. The probability 
is immensely in favor of the last. If the laws which govern the 
recurrence and representation of ideas have been fully and cor- 
rectly set forth, they ought to explain the phenomena of the 
sleeping and disordered conditions of the soul. That they do so ? 
is probable for the following reasons : — 

I. The power of association operates very efficiently 
in all these states. In dreaming, somnambulism, The power of 
insanity, etc., etc., its presence and powers are often op^raSve 1 !!! * 
most apparent. When we ask ourselves, Why did it them alL 
happen that I had such or such a dream ? it is often very easy to 
answer by a reference to the usually recognized laws of associa- 
tion. The strange and unexpected sallies of the insane, however 
wild and preposterous they may be, follow some law of associa- 
tion, though it often leads to the most fantastic result. There is 
always some method in their madness. 



280 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 172. 

II. The deviations from the ordinary working of 
wJitedfor- these laws can also, to some extent, be satisfactorily 
iu^CeSfre accounted for. 

the P P °owere. ° f CIO The powers of the soul ordinarily act in a 
certain conjunction with and proportion to one 
another. It is not surprising, that, when a single power acta 
alone, the phenomena should differ very greatly from those which 
result from the combined activity of them all. In the cases 
supposed, self-consciousness, rational activity, and the voluntary 
control of the bodily movements and the mental states, are all 
set aside ; and the associative power asserts, to a very large ex- 
tent, the possession of the soul. We ought not to be surprised, 
that a power ordinarily acting in connection with the wakeful 
reason and under its control, should manifest results unlike those 
which appear when these regulating elements are present. 

(2.) Certain bodily states are known greatly to modify the 
actings of the sou], when the soul is wakeful and in health. It 
is according to the law of its being, that its action should be 
modified still more when the bodily affections become more effi- 
cient and obtrusive. It should not be surprising then, that under 
such physical conditions as sleep and cerebral excitement, even 
stranger psychical phenomena should be manifest. 

(3.) The comprehensive law under which past mental states 
are reproduced, should be distinguished from the materials upon 
which it operates. While the laws of representation remain the 
same, the conditions under which they act, may vary enough to 
account for every variety of phenomena. 

To the actual reproduction of an image, two conditions are 
necessary, viz., its actual previous presence to the mind, and the 
existence of an exciting occasion in something united with it as 
an element of the mind's previous knowledge or feeling. 

In dreaming, insanity, etc., these conditions are peculiar 
First, in the states of distinct and easily-remembered conscious- 
ness, are present many elements which are less distinctly noticed, 
because they are accessory and subordinate. In the states 
under consideration, those may be brought forward either as the 
materials of phantasy, or as the mediate suggestors of other 
materials. In every act of distinct perception, there is an ex- 
tended background of such objects, standing out in the field of 



§ 172. REPRESENTATION. — THE PHANTASY. 281 

view with more or less prominence, but engrossing some share of 
the soul's energy. Any one of these objects, under possible 
exciting occasions, is capable of being recalled. In the normal 
states of the soul, the prominent or central object is usually re- 
called. In an abnormal state, one or more of the accessories may 
be represented. Under the feelings and purposes of wakefulness, 
a certain class of pictures and thoughts only may be certain 
to be thought of. In dreaming, another set may present them- 
selves ; in insanity, still another ; and yet all of these may 
have been gathered from the mind's own experience. Again : 
there are many conditions of the soul marked by little energy of 
attention, as well as by the feeble influence of rational purpose, 
in which the phantasy greatly prevails. In walking, in driving 
for relaxation, in extreme fatigue, in the transitions from wake- 
fulness to sleep and from sleep to wakefulness, in the many 
listless hours or seasons of reverie, there are multitudes of acts 
and objects which leave little impression, and are rarely, if ever, 
distinctly brought back to the rational and wakeful memory or 
imagination, but of which any one may be recalled under novel 
circumstances. Again: there are activities that have been ex- 
perienced previously to the soul's conscious action. Some of 
these acts tend to be reproduced, and, under varying circum- 
stances, may return either as a principal or accessory element. 
Again: the undefined bodily sense-perceptions, or sensations 
which are accessory in every mental experience, and are promi- 
nent in not a few — which form the background of many, and 
come into the foreground of many also, all tend to recur again. 

The occasions which control the presentation and suggestion 
of images in these abnormal states of the soul are also peculiar. 
In sleep, all the organs of sense-perception are more or less 
quiescent, while the vital organs are active. In insanity, etc., 
the bodily condition and activities are irregular. In both, they 
are greatly unlike those which are present in wakefulness and 
health. These peculiar and morbid bodily states are manifest 
to the soul in the form of peculiar sensations, both vital and 
organic. Sleep, from the beginning to the end, is attended by 
a series of sense-perceptions unlike those experienced in wake- 
fulness. Insanity, in all its forms and degrees, is attended by a 
nervous excitement or depression, which is revealed to conscious- 



282 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§173. 



ness by irritating and uncomfortable sensations. The sensations 
thus excited, become themselves, in turn, the excitants of images 
and thoughts kindred to themselves. 

A third consideration should also be noticed. The creative 
power of the phantasy may have especial activity in dreaming 
and insanity. Whatever that power may be in its functions and 
products — if it be allowed that the phantasy is in any sense 
creative — if, in the waking and rational states, it is not tied to a 
simple reproduction of the past ; if it has any liberty of origina- 
tion, then it might be natural and credible that it should exercise 
this freedom more fully when unlimited by sense, reason, or will, 
than when constrained by these in the earnest activities of the 
wakeful and rational hours. That the creations of the phantasy 
of the dreamer aud the madman have no correspondent realities, 
is obvious to all. The fantasies of "a madman's dream " are 
conceived by us as the most unnatural and the wildest of all 
unrealities. If the phantasy is, in its very nature, a creative as 
well as representative power, it is not surprising that it should 
create in madness and in sleep. If its creations are free in the 
/me state, when reason is wakeful and the will is attent, and 
earnest purposes control, it is not surprising that, in those con- 
ditions of activity in which these influences are feeble, its pro- 
ducts should be irrational and unnatural. 

These considerations may serve as the foundations of a general 
theory of those various conditions of the soul's activity known 
as faintness, dreaming, somnambulism, and delirium. They are 
designed only to prepare for a more particular consideration of 
each. We consider, first of all, sleep, in the two following 
aspects : — 

(1.) Sleep as a condition of the body, i. e., sleep in its physio- 
logical phenomena ; (2.) Sleep in its psychological experiences. 



$ 173. We cannot understand sleep as a state of the soul, 

Sleep physio- without considering the corporeal conditions which attend it. In 
logically con- . „ . „ . 

siuered. order to interpret it psychologically, we must first examine it 

physiologically. In sleep, physiologically viewed, the organs of 
perception, and the nerves connected with them, are comparatively inactive, and 
seem incapable of performing thoir accustomed functions. Conversely, also, the 
soul can no longer control the organs of sense and of locomotion ; or, more ex- 
actly, the soul loses, in a very great degree, its power to direct these organs. 



§ 174. REPRESENTATION. — THE PHANTASY. 283 

On the other hand, the functions of the vegetative, circulatory, and respiratory 
organs, go on as usual, though in the case of some with a somewhat diminished 
energy. That in all these functions the whole tone of life is lowered, is manifest 
directly from observation, and is inferred from the greater sensitiveness of the 
body in sleep, to all those agencies which weaken or endanger the life. On the 
other hand, it is certain that the nutrition of the brain and the whole nervous 
organism, is greatly augmented in sleep, and that sleep is even essential to re- 
store that waste of their material which wakefulness occasions. If wakefulness 
is protracted too long, by nervous restlessness, or excessive mental occupation or 
anxiety, it terminates in fever, delirium, or dementia, through a temporary 
disease or permanent lesion of the nervous organism itself. Hence, sleep is, if 
possible, more absolutely indispensaMe to the restoration of mental activity, than 
to that of any other human function. The incapacity of the organs of sense to 
be affected by impressions from without, as well as to yield to influences or 
directions from within, varies at different times. The want of control of the 
soul over its organs, also varies from the momentary loss of power which can 
suddenly be resumed, to that permanent impotence to speak or move, which is 
experienced in the most distressing nightmare. 

In falling to sleep, the soul passes through many of these conditions, begin- 
ning with the slightest unconsciousness, and proceeding more or less gradually 
through more or fewer intervening stages. In awaking from sleep, it emerges 
from a condition of more or less complete insensibility to one in which the senses 
are fully refreshed and active ; and more or less gradually, according as the occa- 
sion and manner of its waking is more or less gentle or violent. The same is 
true of the processes by which it loses and regains its command over the organs. 
The different senses, as has already been intimated, fall asleep at different times 
in various degrees, and awake also in unlike proportions. Thus, the sense of sight 
may be very obtuse when the sense of hearing is active, as is the case when a per- 
son watchea by the bed of one who is ill, or in the instance of men who can find 
refreshment in sleep when reading or conversation is going on, and are able to re- 
cite when awake what has been read or spoken while they were sleeping. The 
miller sleeps while his mill is grinding, but wakes if it stops. Another person 
sleeps while it is still, but wakes when it moves. The watchman, when wearied, 
sleeps with all his senses, except the senses of touch and muscular direction. Sol- 
diers sleep in every sense and organ of motion, except the legs with which they 
march continuously. 

§ 174. The activity of the soul continues during sleep. It is not 
entirely suspended at any time, though its energy may now and then Sleep ^^^ 
be exceedingly feeble. That it often acts dui-ing sleep, is confessed logically, 
by all. Every dream involves some form of this activity. Thei*e 
is some diversity of opinion in respect to the question, whether this activity is 
constant, or whether it is not infrequently interrupted. Many have argued that 
this activity often ceases, from the circumstance that we are not conscious, and do 
not remember that we dream all the while that we are asleep ; that we know that 
we dream more frequently when sleep is less complete, as soon after we fall asleep, 
or just before we wake ; that in our deepest slumber it often happens that no signs 
of conscious activity are indicated to a looker-on ; and that it is not necessary to 
the continued existence of the soul that it be constantly active. On the other 
hand it is urged that the soul is always active, because, on awaking, it is at once 



284 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§174. 



aware of its own identity, which involves the belief of continued existence during 
the interval of sleep ; and when it wakes, it may recall or review a continued series 
of sensational experiences, if it cannot bring back an uninterrupted course of con- 
scious activities. Moreover, it is urged that the fact that the soul does not recall 
all its dreams does not disprove that it dreams, for there are many waking states 
during the progress of a single hour, much more during a day, which cannot be 
recalled. There are also many dreams which we do not recall ; as is obvious from 
the circumstance, that if, on awaking, we lay hold at once of the thread which is 
in our hands, we can trace our way backwards through the maze of even a succes- 
sion of dreams. 

That the soul acts with feebler energy when asleep than when awake, is obvious 
from the circumstance that in some of its powers it scarcely acts at all. This may 
be fairly inferred from that general dependence of the tone of its action upen the 
force of the body which is observed in wakefulness, which dependence, as may be 
fairly inferred from analogy, extends to its sleeping states. The only possible ex- 
ception to this conclusion would be suggested by the fact that some of the rowers 
— e. g., the phantasy — may seem to act in sleep with greater energy than in wake- 
fulness. With this exception, observation confirms what analogy suggests, ihat, 
in sleep, the general activity of the soul is greatly lowered. 

The powers and capacities of the soul act with unequal and varying energy in 
different persons and in differing conditions of sleep. The representative power 
of the soul, as has already been said, is that which is especially prominent in 
sleep. The law or force under which it acts has already been explained as the 
tendency of the soul to act more readily a second time in forms and with objects 
which have previously occupied its energies. This tendency or force needs only to 
be supposed to be exerted without the regulating presence of the other faculties, in 
order to account for its greater apparent energy. All the so-called laws of associa- 
tion control the production and presence of the objects which make up the image- 
world of the dreamer. These objects are sometimes recalled under the relations 
of time and space, in succession or co-existence. Sometimes the relations of like- 
ness or unlikeness control,: at others, those of cause and effect. Very often, all 
these relations must be resorted to, to account for the presence of the various ob- 
jects of which a single dream is composed. 

This comparative irregularity and capriciousness pertains to the order in which 
these objects are presented to the mind. When the wakeful soul is intent on re- 
calling some object to memory, all the operations of the representative power are 
controlled by this prevailing purpose. The multitude of varied objects which are 
presented by the associating power, are entertained or thrust aside by the judging 
and reasoning intellect, and so an order of their relative value is secured to the 
objects themselves by the mind's reaction upon them. Even if the mind gives 
itself up to reverie, it is constantly awake, or ready to be awake, to the sugges- 
tions of reason, of use, of beauty, or of rectitude. 

There is also the rationalizing and sobering presence of the material world, 
with its obtrusive realities that cannot be mistaken ; its permanent attributes, that 
cannot be changed ; its eternal and superior laws, that can neither be resisted nor 
set aside. The perpetual presence of this fixed and orderly body of facts and 
truths, of itself gives reason and order to the fancies which it must in pari con- 
trol and regulate. 

But in dreams there is an absence of judgment, or the judgments are partial, and 



\ 



§174. REPRESENTATION. — THE PHANTASY. 285 

the stream of images flows on, under the joint impulses given it by the energies 
of the mind's previous activity and the force of casual mental or bodily sugges- 
tions. The material world is withdrawn from the mind's cognizance as an ap- 
prehended fact; it is as though it were not, and never had existed. 

The mind's interpretations of the images of fancy, and even of its bodily sensa. 
tions, are often false and irrational. First of all, it judges the image-world to be a 
real world. How this is possible, it is not so easy to explain ; that it is a fact, 
cannot be doubted. The mind is preoccupied by the action of the representative 
power. The first impulse, when a picture is presented of an absent reality, is to be- 
lieve it to be real when there is no ground for the opposite belief. This is wisely 
provided in the constitution of man, to secure all those actions for which the know- 
ledge or the thought of any reality is given. The mind, in dreaming, yields to this 
impulse. The mind, apprehending no real world with which to contrast and judge 
the imaginary, uses the little force which remains, to infer that the products of its 
shifting phantasy are themselves realities. They are believed to be real, for they ex- 
cite all the emotions which such realities are fitted to produce. Delight is experi- 
enced at tha image of a friend believed to be present, who is perhaps far distant, or 
long removed by death. Grief is felt at some distressing event which is simply 
pictured by the phantasy. The mind is not only incapable of discriminating the 
real from the fantastic, but it interprets the real to be itself a part of its fantastic 
world. It misinterprets the bodily sensations which it experiences, the sensations 
of cold or heat, of oppression in the stomach or the heart, and of pain or pleasure 
in any part of the body. Thus Dr. Gregory relates that, having occasion to apply 
a bottle of hot water to his feet, he dreamed that he was walking on Mount Etna, 
and found the heat insupportable. A person suffering from a blister applied to 
his head, imagined that he was scalped by a party of Indians. A person sleeping 
in damp sheets, dreamed that he was dragged through a stream. By leaving the 
knees uncovered, as an experiment, the dream was produced that the person was 
traveling by night in a diligence. Leaving the back part of the head uncov- 
ered, the same person dreamed he was present at a religious ceremony performed 
in the open air. The smell of a smoky chamber has occasioned frightful dreams 
of being involved in conflagration. The scent of flowers may transport the 
dreamer to some enchanted garden, or the tones of music may surround him with 
the excitements of a well-appointed concert. 

The exercise of this judgment in respect to the higher relations of thought 
varies ^ery greatly in the energy of its action, and the perfection of its results. 
There are many cases in dreams in which single steps, or parts of a series of steps 
in reasoning, are taken surely and correctly, while these processes are entirely dis- 
connected with what went before or followed after, as if the rational powers had 
resumed for a single instant their full energy of function. In other cases, the 
reasoning may be correct and the data may be false, and yet the falseness of the 
data may not be perceived. In still other cases, the data may be correctly dis- 
cerned, and the conclusions correctly derived, so that both premises and reasoning 
combine to a true and valid conclusion. Even the more difficult feats of the in- 
vention and arrangement of the materials of an argument, have been successfully 
performed in dreams. The creations of poetry, even to the selection of rhythm! 
cal words, and the composition of sermons and addresses, have been often effected. 
Difficult problems in mathematics have been solved and remembered ; new and 
ingenious theories have been devised. Happy expedients of deliverance frow 



286 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 175. 

practical difficulties have presented themselves, and brought relief from serious 
embarrassments. 

Consciousness is ordinarily but feebly exercised by the soul in its dreams. It is 
often said to be absent altogether. By consciousness is understood the distinct 
apprehension of the psychical states, as the states of the individual ego, and not 
that transient knowledge of them which is essential to any intellectual activity. It 
is when consciousness acts as judgment, and recognizes the relations of psychical 
states, that its results remain in the memory. This form or degree of conscious- 
ness is usually entirely absent, or feebly exercised in dreams. The reason why it 
is thu3 feebly put forth, may be the same which accounts for the absence of correct 
interpretations of the semblances of the material world. 

For the same reason the estimates of time are so extravagantly and even ludi- 
crously erroneous. In our dreams, we occupy a year in making a voyage ; we per- 
form a journey, we witness a long procession, we climb a mountain, and yet the 
time actually expended is inconceivably short. 

These erroneous judgments of time are the natural and necessary consequences 
of mistaking the phantasms of our dreams for real substances and events. We 
picture to ourselves the incidents of a voyage or a journey. We turn these pic- 
tures into realities, and they carry with themselves the estimates of time which 
would be required if they existed or occurred in fact. The weakening of the con- 
sciousness of the accompanying psychical states, withdraws any corrective in- 
fluences which would be furnished by the more distinct apprehension of the time 
required for the experience of tbem. 

The activity of the sensibilities in the dreaming state requires a moment's con- 
sideration. That we feel in our dreams, or seem to feel, will not be disputed. If 
we believe we are in danger, we experience terror ; if we dream that we are safe or 
successful, we rejoice. In some cases, but not usually, the fear and happiness are 
as intense and as real as when we are awake. In other cases, we feel, but on the 
review are surprised that we felt no more. Our joy and sorrow are but the pale 
counterfeits of waking emotions. The intensity of the emotions depends on the 
strength of our belief and the time of its continuance. 

Is the will properly active at all during our dreams? That we act, as well as 
know and feel, is obvious from experience. We seem to resist, to struggle, to 
speak, to sing, to walk, to run, etc. We strive to attend, to remember, to contrive, 
to compose, etc. j in other words, we seem to use our mental powers under some 
directive force for definite objects. It follows that the conative, or impulsive part 
of our nature — the capacities which fit for action, are employed in the dreaming 
state. If these capacities are properly called the will, then we use the will in 
dreaming. But if we mean by the will, the capacity to direct the impulses by a 
rational or a moral purpose, it is equally clear that the will is entirely dormant, or, 
at best, is only occasionally or feebly active. It is and must be inactive, because 
the appropriate conditions for its exercise are absent. The reason does not pro- 
pose a distinct end which the mind retains in view. The reflective consciousness 
neither forms rules nor imposes them. The will cannot act as a rational or moral 
director when these essential conditions are withdrawn. 

$ 175. Somnambulism assumes three forms, which have certain 
Somnambulism, „ ' , . , . 

or abnormal features or phenomena in common, but which, in certain respects, 

,loe P- are unlike. These forms are the natural, the morbid, and the 

artificial. The natural, is that which may occur in ordinary sleep. The morbid, is 



§175. REPRESENTATION. — THE PHANTASY. 287 

an incident or phase of active disease of body or mind. The artificial, is induced by 
the instrumentality of another person. Each of these forms or manifestations is 
subdivided into varieties, which pass into one another by scarcely distinguishable 
shades of difference. 

Natural somnambulism is distinguished from normal sleep by the special sensi- 
bility of some — generally some one — of the organs of sense, and by special ac- 
tivity in the use of some of the organs of bodily motion. The appellation, sleep- 
walking, is derived from the act of walking in sleep, which for obvious reasons oc- 
curs more frequently than any other bodily activity. 

A multitude of examples of natural somnambulism are recorded. One only will 
serve. "A young nobleman mentioned by Horstius, living in the citadel of 
Breslau, was observed by his brother, who occupied the same room, to rise in his 
sleep, wrap himself in his cloak, and escape by a window to the roof of a building. 
He there tore in pieces a magpie's nest, wrapped the young birds in his cloak, re- 
turned to his apartment, and went to bed. In the morning he mentioned the cir- 
cumstances as having occurred in a dream, and could not be persuaded that there 
had been any thing more than a dream, till he was shown the magpies in his 
cloak." — Dr. Abercrombie. 

The activities required in this case, were the sense-perceptions of sight to direct 
the movements and the active control of the legs and arms, Sometimes the sense 
of smell, or of hearing, or of taste, are observed to be unusually acute. The use of 
the voice is often observed. The mental powers are often excited with great 
energy, continuity, and success. Persons in the somnambulic state will recite 
passages from authors even in a foreign language, which they could not repeat 
when awake. Persons who are imperfectly proficient in a language, converse with 
far greater ease and correctness than they have ever been known to do in the 
normal condition. Some remarkable compositions have been written, and eloquent 
discourses have been spoken, which were quite beyond the ordinary capacities of 
the individuals from whom they came. 

In the magnetic, or morbid somnambulism, such extraordinary mental power has 
often been observed as to be ascribed to inspiration from another mind, or to some 
miraculous deviation from the laws of nature. 

The ordinary and the magnetic or ecstatic somnambulism, differ from each 
other, in that the ordinary is preceded and followed by ordinary slumber, while 
the ecstatic comes upon the patient and leaves him at onee, usually in a condition 
of extreme disease. In their psychological features, the two forms of this affec- 
tion may be considered as alike, differing only in the greater intensity of some of . 
their manifestations. Both are also exaltations of phenomena which are occa- 
sionally exhibited in common dreaming and sleep. 

In all forms of somnambulism, the representative power is the one most promi- 
nently and conspicuously active. The leading objects of cognition and feeling are 
the mind's own creations. The man lives and moves, he feels and acts, in and for 
a dream. Dream-objects are taken to be real existences, and these engross and 
absorb the chief energies, and direct to many of the actions. But the dream of 
the somnambulist is far more methodical and continuous than the dream of 
ordinary sleep. The mind apparently rests upon its objects for a longer time, and 
gives to them a more fixed attention than it does to the phantasmagoria of the 
common dream. Certainly it must do both of these, when it adapts speech and 



288 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§m 



motion to its dream-world, as it does whenever it is prompted to speak, and walk, 
and lift, and write, at the rate required by its phantasms. Its sense-perceptiona 
do indeed direct the motions and regulate the rate of many of its bodily acts ; but 
it were a serious error to suppose that what it seems to see, or to hear by the ear, 
makes up the entire world, or the principal part of the world in which the mind 
has its being and performs its acts. Besides these sense-objects, there is a multi- 
tude besides, which make up the background, and the foreground even, of its field 
of view. In the case of the nobleman cited, in all his movements to and from the 
nest of magpies, his thoughts were occupied with many phantasms which he con- 
sidered real, and with reference to which he performed the actions recited. These 
formed the connecting and the accompanying scenery of the sense-objects which 
he perceived. The fact that sense-objects were blended with them, served to 
steady and retard the progress of the dream, and thus to make it regular and me- 
thodical. The feats which the fancy performs, its powers of memory, its skill in 
invention, and its resources of creation, are only the natural results of concen- 
trated attention upon a few, and these connected objects. But this exaltation of 
the fancy is purchased at the cost of its being limited to but few objects — to single 
and spontaneous trains of thought running in the courses started and traced by 
the muscular and vita] sensations, or the few sense-objects to which the excited 
senses are awake. 

The powers of sense-perception, so far as they are exerted at all, act with sur- 
prising energy and effect. It is not only a surprising thing that they should act 
at all in so profound a sleep ; but that the organ should be more sensitive and the 
mind more acute than in the normal condition, is still more remarkable. But this 
is often observed in the somnambulist. The objects seen are often seen by the 
faintest light, and yet they are seen most clearly, because actions requiring acute 
vision of these objects are performed with precision and success. The touch must 
be acute, or the somnambulist could not walk so confidently in difficult and dan- 
gerous places, nor avoid obstacles so dexterously, nor perform so many nice opera- 
tions, as in skilfully writing and playing on a musical instrument. The senses 
of smell and hearing are often unusually sensitive to odors and sounds. 

The question has sometimes been raised, Whether the somnambulist really per- 
ceives with the senses? It has been argued that he does not, because he also 
dreams, and because his dreams furnish the greater number of the objects of his 
knowledge and feeling. It has been inferred that, when he seems to perceive, he 
only dreams, and that what seem to be the objects of his sense-perceptions, serve, 
through his interpretations, to form a part of the dreams in which alone he knows 
and feels. To this it is sufficient to reply that he certainly acts with reference to 
the real world, and that he really acts — i. e., directs the motions of his legs and 
arms, and uses and modulates his voice. So far at least as he acts he must have 
real sensations. 

But while his senses are often surprisingly acute, they are both limited and un- 
certain in their operation and in their results. He does not see everything in thu 
apartment in which he is pi-csent, but only the table, or chairs, or the paper on 
which he writes, or the candle which he holds. It is only to those objects which 
have some relation to his thoughts and actions that he is sensitively alive. 

The various observations that have been made, warrant the induction that the 
phantasy stimulates and awakens the organ of sense, and determines ^he mind te 



§ 175. REPRESENTATION. — THE PHANTASY. 289 

use it with wakeful attention. It is the soul itself that quickens the organ thu3 
made ready by disease or weakness for this extraordinary activity, to that momen- 
tary excitement which is required to fasten the mind to its monitions. 

This extraordinary exaltation of single senses is not without its analogy in the 
wakeful and normal conditions of the soul. The vision of the sailor, the lace- 
maker, the horologist, the hearing of the sentinel and the hunter, the touch of the 
blind, the machinist, and the musician, seem to the stranger to be something al- 
most supernatural. The still higher exaltation of these sense-powers, in the case 
of the somnambulist, is on the same ascending line with these natural variations. 
It is only extraordinary in degree. 

We come next to a subject still more interesting, and, at first sight, more puz- 
zling, viz., the apparent increased excitement of intellectual power as manifested 
in achievements performed by the somnambulist, particularly when in the mesmeric 
or ecstatic condition. The first which we shall consider is the claim for him of 
the ability to perceive material qualities and objects without the medium of the 
organs of sense. For example : it is asserted that he can see near objects through 
the thickest bandage, and with the back of the head ; that he can hear by the 
epigastrium, etc., etc. 

In respect to the first claim, that near objects can be seen or heard independently 
of the ear and the eye, we need only observe that, provided many of the stories 
are neither false nor exaggerated, not one of them proves that the mind can have 
sense-perceptions independently of the nervous organism. If the story be re- 
ceived as true, that the person has seen (not remembered nor conjectured/ through 
an interposed bandage or by the back of the head, it would still be true that the 
optic nerve and the retina might be so morbidly sensitive as to be affected by the 
light, even if the eyelids were closed or thickly covered. No fact is more clearly 
established than that, within certain limits, one part of the sensorium, or portion 
of a single system of nerves, can, under extraordinary excitement, perform the 
functions of another. 

The second claim is of a power to see distant objects which no sense-power can 
reach, as objects immured in total darkness behind thick and solid walls. Such a 
power, or its exercise, can be explained by no known powers or laws of nature. 
There is nothing analogous to its possession or its exercise, in any thing which we 
know in the normal actings of the soul. Whatever the power may be which acts 
in this way, it is not vision. The person does not see the object, but if he discerns 
any thing, it is a phantasm, an image, or series of images which are purely 
mental. If there be any thing which he apprehends, it is a mental object, the 
production of his own soul. It exists while he beholds it, within and for his soul 
alone. If the object or scene has never been the object of his personal inspection, 
the pictures which he forms of it must be taken from materials within his own ob- 
servation, or imparted by description. If it be the city of Pekin, or the Himalaya 
mountains, the picture is composed either of fragments of what he has seen of 
New York or Boston, of London or Paris, of the mountains of America, or Europe, 
or from some drawing or painting of the cities or mountains themselves. 

The third claim for the soul, of a power to understand its own bodily disorders, 
as to their seat or cure, may be explained in part by the fact that the sufferer in 
the somnambulic state is far more keenly alive than when awake, to his own 
bodily sensations. If an organ is diseased, the disease will often be manifest by 
means of sensations which are prominent and unmistakable in the soul's expert 

13 



290 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§175. 



ence. These are the data for its interpretations or inferences. The disease may 
have been an object of intense anxiety and earnest inquiry. The person affected 
may have more or less knowledge of the anatomical structure and of the func- 
tions of many of the organs. It will always be found to be true, in such cases, 
that the insight of the somnambulist in respect to the names of the organs and 
their functions, does not go beyond what he has learned by conversation or read- 
ing. Let him be ever so gifted, he will not learn the nature or the name of a 
single organ, or its office, or a single remedy, which has not been the subject of 
thought in wakefulness and health. If this is so, the case is reduced to extra- 
ordinary sagacity exercised upon data or knowledge communicated or impressed 
in an extraordinary manner. 

Fourth, the exaltation of the higher intellect to the capacity to perform some 
very extraordinary achievements, remains to be considered. This is much more 
remarkable in the morbid than in the natural somnambulism. The somnambulist 
sometimes displays great acuteness of judgment. He sees resemblances and differ- 
ences which had not occurred to him in his waking states, and which astonish 
lookers-on. He is quick in repartee ; he solves difficult problems ; he composes 
and speaks with method and effect ; he reasons acutely; he interprets character 
with rare subtlety ; he understands passing events with unusual insight ; he pre- 
dicts those which are to come by skilful forecast. How are all these phenomena to 
be explained ? 

We reply : By the excitement of the intellect from an intense interest in the 
subject-matter with which it is occupied, the concentration of the attention for 
a long time upon a few objects only and a few of their relations, and the pre- 
vious familiarity of the mind with these objects and relations. That the mind 
occasionally acts with energy when in the dream-state, even in its highest func- 
tions, has already been noticed. That, when it thinks and reasons in somnani' 
bulism, it is animated by strong excitement arising from a strong interest in the 
subject-matter, is obvious to all, and will not be questioned. 

Next, the attention is concentrated upon objects for a sufficient length of 
time to secure entire familiarity with them and their relations. The attention 
of the somnambulist is limited, as we have seen, to but few sense-objects. To 
all other objects except those which excite this or that sense, it is deaf and 
blind. 

Last of all, his sense-objects and his dream-objects are ordinarily very familiar. 
They have previously been the frequent object of thought and speculation. 
The questions for which the person finds new answers, the problems for which he 
devises new solutions, the events or characters upon which he casts a new 
light, are not for the first time before iris mind. The operations of his in- 
tellect are also all in the line of his previous efforts and training. The som- 
nambulist does not for the first time appear as a mathematician, poet, orator, 
politician, or divine ; nor does he display activities which have not been in 
their quality and kind, if not in degree, familiar to his use. 

The gift of divination, or prophecy, which is claimed for the somnambulist, when- 
ever it deserves consideration, is explained in part by the extraordinary sagacity 
which is developed in respect to subjects that are interesting and familiar to tho 
mind. The somnambulist forecasts or prophesies, by reasoning upon the evidence 
before him. His attention being fixed and his interest being aroused, he applies 
his intellectual force to the subjects before him, and shows the same sagacity in 



§ 175. REPRESENTATION. — THE PHANTASY. 291 

foreseeing future results that he exhibits in interpreting events that are present 
by the causes, the laws, and principles that are concerned in bringing them to 
pass. 

One or two other features common to all the varieties of somnambulism remain 
to be noticed. 

First, the somnambulist, when he wakes, usually, though not invariably, forgets 
his actions, perceptions, and thoughts during sleep. His dream, with all that it 
involves, is to him an empty blank. To many, this seems incredible ; to others, it 
is an insoluble mystery. That it is not incredible, is established by the amount 
of decisive evidence which is adduced of its actual occurrence. That it is not in- 
explicable, appears from analogous phenomena in dream-life, as well as from the 
dissimilarity of the conditions of mental activity in the waking and the somnam- 
bulic state. The dreams of the profoundest sleep are rarely remembered, for the 
reason that the bodily condition, with all the sensations which it involves, is, in 
many respects, very unlike that which attends our lighter slumbers and our waking 
states. The sensations which accompany these varying conditions, as has been 
shown, are an essential element in our mental experiences. If the phantasy is 
active, they are the essential conditions of its activity in any determinate direc- 
tion. For this reason, these bodily sensations direct the course and furnish the 
occasions for many of our dreams. But in somnambulism these sensations are 
more controlling and more unique than in any other dreaming or in any other 
sleep. Whatever else there may be which awakens and directs the phantasy is, 
if possible, still more unlike any other experiences of wakefulness or sleep. If the 
transition from ordinary sleep and ordinary dreams to wakefulness is often so ab- 
rupt and complete as to involve entire oblivion of all which we have thought, or 
felt, or done, it is less surprising that, when we awake from the sleep of som- 
nambulism, whether the transition be sudden or gradual, it is so complete that 
the present presents few or no relations to the past. 

These considerations both explain and confirm the second fact that has some- 
times been observed, viz. : that the somnambulist, when he passes into a suc- 
ceeding condition of abnormal activity, remembers the experiences, and, as it 
were, remembers the self of similar previous states. How this should be possible, 
most clearly appears from the principles already laid down: The objects of 
thought and memory, the motives and directors of action which were present in 
the previous condition, return to him a second time, and they bring with them 
their attendant experiences. AVhen the soul passes a second time into the sur- 
roundings of his abnormal being, they are no longer strange, but he recognizes 
them as familiar, and, taking up new threads of memory, he recalls the pre- 
ceding dream. 

Some remarkable instances are recorded of alternating states, in each of which 
the acquisitions, the capacities, and the employments were unlike those in the 
other, and yet, as the similar states recurred at intervals, they were connected 
by continuity of memory. 

The artificial somnambulism is peculiar, in that it is induced by the interven- 
tion of another person, who, by means of passes or other appliances, brings the 
subject into a sleep and dream, the processes and objects of which he directs, 
and from which he awakes him at his own will. Hence it is called artificial, as 
effected by another, in distinction from the natural, which is induced by ordi- 
nary sleep, and the morbid, which is the incident of active disease. It is also 



292 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§173. 



called the magnetic sleep. It originally received this appellation, because it was 
supposed to be produced by a magnetic influence, generated by or attendant 
upon all the animal functions. 

There is still another condition called hypnotism, or the hypnotic state, -which 
may be properly called the artificial sleep as distinguished from the artificial 
somnambulism — i. e., the artificial dream. It is like somnambulism, as pro- 
duced by the agency of another, and as being under the control of the pro- 
ducing agent. The connection of the mind of the operator with the mind and 
the actions of the subject, is not so manifest, or is not always carried so far as 
is claimed for artificial somnambulism. It is however so like it in every essential 
feature, as to deserve to be considered as at least a lower degree of its exercise. 

For the purposes which we have in view, hypnotism and artificial somnam- 
bulism or mesmerism, may be considered as one. The states so designated have 
the following features : Artificial sleep; entire or total insensibility of some of the 
sense-organs; an unnatural excitement and acuteness of others; the capacity to 
maintain some relation with the operator, so that the sleep and the dreams of 
the subject are under his exclusive direction and control. All these phenomena, 
with one apparent exception, are analogous to those of the forms of somnam- 
bulism already considered. The production of the sleep is the result of an ex- 
citement of some of the sense-organs or parts of the nervous system, initiated 
by exciting and fixing the attention of a susceptible patient, by the aid of a 
strong will and the energetic activity of the operator. The physical and imme- 
diate cause of the sleep is common to all the cases. It is the congestion of 
the brain. The occasions or causes of the congestion are diverse. In natural 
somnambulism, it is an incident of ordinary sleep in a person of sensitive 
organism. In morbid somnambulism, it is an attendant of active nervous 
disease. In the artificial, the congestion is the result of the attention of tho 
patient leading to excessive physical excitement of some part of the sen- 
soriuin. 

In artificial somnambulism, the feature which is at once the most dis- 
tinctive and the most difficult to explain is the control of one mind by an- 
other. While the patient is inaccessible to communications from every other 
person, he is open both to communications and impressions from the operator. 
Not only is he open to communications from him, but he is also in a considerable 
degree subject to his control. 

If, however, we consider the phenomena of natural somnambulism, or even 
those of the common dream, we shall find some striking points of resemblance. 
In both these conditions, great insensibility of certain powers is conjoined with 
extreme sensitiveness of others. The dreamer and the somnambulist are dead in 
some of their senses, and comparatively alert and active in others. The phantasy 
of both is active. To ordinary persons any appi'oach into their inner life is en- 
tirely precluded. But to the observer who understands the habits, or can inter- 
pret the dream of another, it is not difficult to gain the attention, to institute and 
maintain conversation, to effect a communication with the thoughts, to givo posi- 
tive direction and control to the thoughts, and, through the thoughts, to the feel- 
ings. No feature of a person in this condition is so striking as the entire and 
helpless dependence of some of his powers on other persons for stimulus and guid- 
ance, and tho passiveness with which both tho senses and the fancy respond to 
their suggestions, and arc controlled by thoir direction. 



§ 176. REPRESENTATION. — THE PHANTASY, 293 

In the artificial somnambulism these conditions are intensified. The natural 
equilibrium is more effectually disturbed than in the state just described. The 
insensibility of some of the powers, and the sensitiveness of others, are height- 
ened. This condition is induced by processes that bring the operator prominently 
before the attention of the subject, and connect him with the trains of thought 
which his phantasy pursues. The subject falls asleep with his eye fixed upon 
the operator, by obeying directions which fell from his lips, and following 
motions and signs which engrossed his own attention. When the sleep is effected, 
it is in its nature but partial. A portion only of his powers are awake, and, by 
concession, are morbidly and sensitively alive to their appropriate impressions. 
It is not unnatural, rather it is most natural and reasonable, to expect that these 
powers so sensitive would respond to the voice and even to the tones of the one 
person to whom the patient had passively surrendered in the beginning of the 
process; that indications which escape the notice of ordinary observers, should be 
intelligible and patent for him, and that, when these indications are conveyed 
they should control all his movements of thought and feeling. It is credible that 
the pictures before the fancy of the operator should be awakened in his own, and 
that his positive assertion should not only be taken as proof of their real existence, 
but should cause the subject to believe that his own senses perceive them, so that 
he should think he sees a mountain, a house, brilliant colors, smoke, flame, etc., 
etc., at the will of the operator who dominates over his fancy. 

§ 176. Our discussion of the phantasy would not be complete, 

if we omitted to notice the phenomena of hallucinations, and Hallu .cmations, 
r ' apparitions, etc. 

spectral apparitions or illusions. A distinction should be made 

between the proper images of the phantasy, when mistaken for or believed to 

be realities, as by the dreamer and the somnambulist, and the actual vision of 

images in the formation of which the senses cooperate, such as occur to persons 

in a morbid condition when they are broadly awake, as also to those attacked by 

fever, or to such as suffer from the effects of certain narcotics or intoxicating 

drugs. One of the most remarkable cases of continued exposure to such visita^ 

tions, is that recorded of himself by the celebrated Nicolai of Berlin in the 

Transactions of the Royal Society of Berlin, for 1799. 

The case of Nicolai is by no means solitary. There are not a few persons 
of sensitive organization who occasionally see distinct images, visions, and 
phantasms of real objects, which have distinct form, distinguishable color, and 
a certain permanent endurance like objects actually existing. These phantasms, 
moreover, assume relations of place and motion to real objects. They are seated 
in chairs, they stand by the bedside, they look through the window, and have 
the dimensions which are suitable to their place and their distance from the 
observer. If the judgment of the subject of them is clear, and his self-corn, 
mand complete, he knows they are not real objects, even though he cannot 
remove them. (Cf. Hallucinations, or the Rational History of Apparitions, 
Visions, etc., etc., by A. Brierre de Boismont, Phil. 1853.) 

These phantasms are much more frequent in transient delirium from fever, 
or permanent insanity. They are the almost invariable result of a variety 
of drugs, as opium, hasheesh {Cannabis Indica), and stramonium. They ar» 
the fearful attendants of that irregularity of nervous action which is the 
consequence of excess in the use of intoxicating liquors. It is noticeable that 
the excitement occasioned by each of these drugs, as also that delirium tremens «r 



294 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§177. 



attended by phantasms of its own. These phantasms are not confined to vision 
alone. The other senses have their appropriate phantasms ; the car has 
sounds, the touch various feelings, and the nostrils distinguishable odors. 
None of these, however, are as definite, or as permanent, or as clearly distin- 
guishable as the phantasms of vision. 

It is important to distinguish these phantasms or apparitions from the 
images of the phantasy proper. Unless we do, we cannot cleai-ly understand 
or interpret the phenomena of delirium, and certain other forms of mental 
aberration. Two agencies concur in their production — the action of the 
phantasy by means of the spiritual image, and that of the sense-organ which 
is appropriately concerned. It has already been observed, that when even a 
sense-object is imaged, especially if it be vividly and continuously pictured 
by the phantasy, as a sound or sight, the mind's attention to it tends to 
awaken a sympathetic activity of the sense-organ by which the object was ori- 
ginally perceived. 

Again, in the sense-organism psychologically considered, there is a tendency to 
be excited or impressed a second time without a sense-object, in a manner similar 
to that which the presence of the object originally occasioned. Sometimes, in 
conditions of the system not known to be abnormal, this excitement goes so far 
as to produce in the mind all the effects of transient sense-perception. As a con- 
sequence, the mind has actual percepts without material objects, especially on 
waking from sleep. The mind sees colored spectra, and hears sounds when there 
are no material things or objects to be seen or heard. These occasional phe- 
nomena clearly establish the truth that the sense-organism, without the stimulus 
of an object, can be brought into a condition nearly allied to that to which it is 
excited by that object. Whether the excitement is mental or physical, is of little 
import, pi'ovided the excitement is furnished. Let, now, the sense-organism be 
in a condition of morbid sensibility, and let the phantasy be also morbidly 
aroused, and it is not unnatural that phantasms should take material forms or be 
invested with material qualities. But let the judgment itself be disturbed by 
more serious disarrangements of the nervous system ; and the raving madness 
which sees nothing but phantasms where it ought to see realities, or which in- 
vests the real objects of sense with fantastic shapes and attributes, are fully ex- 
plained (cf. H 78, 143, 150). 

£ 177. It is no part of our duty to give a scientific theory of in- 
Insanity. sanity. We have only attempted to explain the part which the 

phantasy has in the mental operations, under this condition of ir- 
regular psychical activity. We ought also to add, that it is by no means uni- 
versally the case that the insane arc haunted with phantasms. It often happens 
that insanity is the result of mere mental confusion or distraction, such as may 
result from the excessive rapidity or the excessive preponderance of certain or- 
ganic or vital sense-perceptions. These may so distract or preoccupy the atten. 
tion, as to preclude the possibility of a cool judgment or a controlled activity in 
respect to any matter whatever. In such cases, the phantasy, as well as tho per- 
ceptions, are cither so hurried and flighty, or so fixed and recurring, that the ac- 
tivities of memory, comparison, and judgment arc all untrustworthy. Or, again, 
tho mind, and not the body, under some overmastering passion, has given to the 
phantasy such complete control over tho other powers, as to disturb the equili- 
brium of spiritual activity. In these cases tho phenomena are purely mental. 



*§ 178. REPRESENTATION. — THE IMAGINATION. 295 

The sense-perceptions are correctly made. The vision is disturbed by no spectrum, 
There are no special disturbances of the bodily sensations. But the mind is oc- 
cupied with inferences incorrectly derived from its past experiences or its present 
condition. It is haunted with depressing images, or gloomy forebodings. Its 
distracted phantasy is so overpowered as to set at naught the testimony of the 
senses, the asseverations of trusted friends, the conclusions of its own better judg- 
ment, the principles, the faith, and the hopes which had been the soul's support 
and guide. 



CHAPTER VI. 



REPRESENTATION. — (3.) THE IMAGINATION OR CREATIVE 
POWER. 

From the phantasy, the most passive form and exercise of 
representation, we proceed to the imagination, its most active and 
elevated energy. 

§ 178. In treating of the creative imagination, we 
shall first consider the general characteristics, condi- materials com- 
tions, and laws, which are common to this power in Sanation. 
all its phases and degrees of activity, and then the 
special forms in which it is manifested. 

Our first duty is, to consider the conditions, laws, and charac- 
teristics which are common to the creative imagination. We 
ask, first of all, what are the materials which are furnished to 
this power from nature and experience, and which it is forced to 
make use of in all its creations? In answer to this general 
question, we would say: — 

1. Space and time are always employed in these processes, and 
always appear in their products. The objects that are conceived, 
whether by the poet, the dramatist, or the inventor, as forming 
the scenes in which their personages, materials, or machinery are 
introduced, or within which they are conceived, are invariably 
subjected to the laws and relations of space. The acts and 
events which are described or imagined, all take place under the 
conditions of time. They precede and follow one another. They 
are either present, past, or future. The world of the imagp 



296 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§179/ 



nation is always a world of imagined space and imagined time, 
as the world of reality is a world of real space and real time. 

2. The necessary and universal thought-conceptions, and re- 
lations under which we cognize real beings, are always supposed 
and employed. Every being and thing which we imagine, we 
imagine more or less distinctly, as substance with attributes, 
as cause and effect under proper conditions, and as means and 
ends. 

It is not intended that the imagination pictures those in their 
abstract form. They cannot be imaged, any more than they 
can be perceived by sense or consciousness. But as concrete 
objects can be perceived only under these relations, so when they 
are imaged, they can and must be imaged as connected by 
means of them. 

3. The imagination is limited to the material qualities which 
nature furnishes. We cannot create or conceive of new colors 
by any exertion of creative energy. Hume and Tetens both 
suggest, that if the imagination were furnished with the colors 
blue and yellow, it could, by combining the two, image the color 
green, without ever having seen it. The mistake is twofold. 
The eye does not see the blue and yellow in the green, but th& 
product which results from the combination of the two. The 
imagination cannot go beyond what the bodily eye furnishes. 

In a similar way, the imagination is limited with respect to all 
the simple qualities of sense, to tastes, and sounds, and odors, 
and tactual feels. 

4. In like manner, the imagination is limited to the spiritual 
phenomena and processes which consciousness reveals, as well as 
to the powers which these processes suppose. What it is to 
know, and feel, and will, we know by the varieties of our own 
experience ; and what a being is who can exert these activities, 
we are taught by consciousness. In this way we learn what are 
the acts, and products, and capacities of spirit. 

The power of § 179. We inquire, second, What new products 
tion tTcreate can ^ e evolved and created out of these materials by 
new products. the i mag i nat i on p roper ? We follow the order of 
the topics already adopted. 

(1.) In respect to space and time, though we cannot imagine 
objects to exist nor events to occur out of relation to each or to 



§ 179. REPRESENTATION. — THE IMAGINATION. 297 

both, yet we can imagine them to bear relations to each, to 
which there is no type of reality. 

The imagination can make changes in the size of objects. The 
types of animals actually existing, as of the horse, the man, the 
elephant, and the mouse, lie within certain extremes, the greatest 
and least of their kind ever known. The imagination scorns 
these limits, and it can give us horses of every size, from the 
ponies of Queen Mab up to steeds large enough for the uses 
of a giant. It can create men smaller than Lilliputians, and 
larger than the contrasted Brobdignags. It can make elephants 
smaller than mice, and mice larger than elephants. 

Again, the position or situation of objects is determined by the 
character of their material and the laws of nature. Mountains 
hold a certain relation to vallies, streams to meadows, groves to 
lawns, houses to gardens, cities to harbors, roads, and rivers ; so 
that, where we find the one, we expect to find the other. But 
the imagination acknowledges none of these relations or laws. 
While it. must imagine all these objects as spatial, it can place 
them as it will in space. It can plant a garden in a desert a 
thousand leagues from a dwelling of man. It can build and 
people a city, without harbor, river, or road. 

There are fixed forms of objects in nature, as the drooping 
elm, the aspiring pine, the umbrageous beech, the massive and 
gnarled oak. In rock and mountain, certain types are ever re- 
curring. The same is true of the form of the horse, the deer, 
the dog, and of man himself. But the imagination can draw 
more graceful lines than nature has ever shaped, the material 
with which she works being more intractable, and the action of 
staining and decomposing elements being inevitable. Following 
her idealizing images, art has given us the Egyptian tomb and 
pyramid, the Chinese pagoda, the Grecian temple, and the 
Gothic cathedral, none of which are copied from nature, though 
all have been suggested by her forms. 

In one aspect they surpass nature, for their lines are more con- 
summately drawn, and their forms are moulded more perfectly. 
We even measure nature by what art has done, and commend 
her by epithets taken from art. We say of the stem of the pine 
or the elm, It shoots up like a pillar. We call the forest a 
" pillared shade " We say of a man, He stands like a statue; 

13* 



298 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§179. 



or, He is an Apollo, for graceful strength ; She is a Venus, for 
beauty. 

In time, also, the imagination has boundless range. It must 
represent all actions and events, as either now, before, or after, 
yet it can do as it pleases as to which shall be now, before or 
after. Nature, in respect to time relations, acts after its own 
laws and within its own limits. The imagination can override 
them all, and accordingly she can make Puck "put a girdle 
roundabout the earth in forty minutes," and Uriel "glide on 
a sunbeam," " swift as a shooting star." 

There are also special creations which the imagination forms 
and coDstructs, of which space and time are assumed as the only 
required conditions. Let all material existences be conceived to 
cease to be, leaving only an empty void within any limits which 
may be supposed, and in that void which is feigned, the imagi- 
nation can construct the surface with its ever-varied outlines, 
and the solid of every conceivable form. These are purely 
mental constructions, and exist only for the mind and by the 
mind which forms them. Their form may be suggested by 
certain material things with which we are conversant. But the 
line, the surface, and the solid constructed by the mind, are far 
more perfectly drawn and moulded than any that nature has 
ever furnished in material objects, or than art has imitated with 
material instruments. 

The imagination can also sweep all actual events and pheno- 
mena from the line of time, and then plant along its course the 
shadows of events that shall only symbolize or represent its suc- 
cessive intervals or instants. It can also group and combine 
these as it will. Heal events, as they precede and follow one 
another, may incite to these acts of pure construction ; but the acts 
and the products which they excite and suggest are to be referred 
to the creative energy of the imagination. What relations these 
hold to the distinctions of number, will be discussed in the proper 
place (§ 280). 

(2.) In the world of matter, the imagination can create no new 
material, but it can divide and combine the parts of the material 
things with which it is familiar, so as to form new existences. 

The head and trunk of a man it can fit to the shoulders and 
body of a horse. It can form a mermaid — part woman, part 



§ 179. REPRESENTATION. — THE IMAGINATION. 299 

fish. It can provide men, women, and children with wings, and 
turn them into angels and cherubs. It can represent any animal 
with a human head. It can add to the head of a man the ears 
of an ass, and give to another the mouth and nose of a puppy. 
It can connect the part or the whole of any plant with the part 
or the whole of any animal, making a cabbage to sprout from 
the hump of a camel, or a rose-branch to nod from the head of a 
horse, as we see delineated in some quaint pictures and engrav- 
ings. It can recombine and rearrange the parts of inorganic 
things as it will, making a rock to be balanced upon a roof-ridge, 
and a bridge to stand dry in a desert. There is no limit to the 
grotesque and fantastic combinations which can be made with 
the parts and the wholes of material objects. Though the ima- 
gination cannot invent a single new sensible or material quality, 
it can connect such qualities as nature has never combined, 
making flaming red dogs, bright yelloAV oxen, woolly horses, talk- 
ing mules, musical jackasses, golden mountains, rivers of wine, 
ponds of beer, and fountains of hot coffee. 

(3.) In respect to spiritual beings, the imagination is limited by 
similar constraints and invested with a similar freedom. A spirit 
has no visible or extended parts ; therefore, as a spirit, it cannot 
be divided and recombined ; but a spirit may be connected with 
any kind or form of matter, may be imprisoned in trees, may 
animate a cloud, may dwell in an animal form, or "leap like 
Minerva from the head of Jupiter !" 

Not a single new spiritual capacity can be invented or ima- 
gined. The loftiest and the purest of spirit-creations, simply 
feel, desire, and will. The humblest and the most degraded can 
do no less. We cannot invest the highest archangel with any 
endowment other than these. AYe cannot refuse to the lowliest 
animal some poor analoga to some of these functions. 

In respect to the limitations and the conditions of the exercise 
of the intellect, the imagination has the widest range of creative 
power. It can conceive the intellect of a God that creates all 
that it discerns, ami discerns whatever it creates, without condi- 
tion or process, by an all-penetrating and all-comprehending in- 
tuition. It can also imagine the intellect of an idiot, struggling 
to free itself from the gross obstructions of a diseased body, and 
fixing its painful attention in the first beginnings of knowledge. 



300 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 179. 

In respect of feeling, it can, on the one hand, imagine pure 
love glowing with the energy of seraphic fervor, or simple hatred 
raging with fiendish malignity ; and, on the other, the most im- 
perfect and feeblest actings of either. 

There is no limit to the variety of spiritual beings with which 
the imaginary world can be peopled, nor to the variety of the 
conditions of being and acting to which they can be subjected. 
The graceful Titania, with her frolicsome and mischief-making 
fairies ; the hideous Caliban, in body arid spirit the very contrast 
of the wonderful Miranda ; Satan and Abdiel ; are examples of 
the variety of spiritual creations which the imagination can con- 
struct out of its limited materials. 

(4.) We have seen that the imagination cannot step without 
the charmed circle of thought-conceptions and relations. Some 
of the examples of what it can do within that circle by newly 
conjoining attributes of material and spiritual beings, have 
already been given. It cannot conceive of beings, except as 
substances and attributes, but it can join any attribute, of any 
intensity and compass, to any substance. It cannot break them 
from that connection which binds all real beings and events as 
causes and effects ; but it can make any existence to serve as the 
cause of any other as its effect, and thus can reverse the whole 
order of actual being by its capricious and fantastic combina- 
tions ; or it can enlarge the bounds of science by its happy sug- 
gestions of undiscovered powers and laws, and the appliances of 
art by applications, before unimagined, of familiar agencies to 
new results. All things in the world of fancy must be conceived 
as fitted for some end, but the adaptations may be imagined as 
wildly as the caprices of a madman's dream, or as wisely as the 
perfect fitness which we believe has been arranged by the all- 
wise God. 

With this view before us of the materials to which the imagi- 
nation is limited, and of the products into which it transforms 
them, we are prepared to inquire, third, How does the imagina- 
tion effect these changes ; or what is the precise work which the 
imagination performs in its creative function ? We observe, in 
answer to these inquiries, There are three different methods in 
which its creative power is shown. (1.) The imagination can re- 
eombine and arrange the constituents of nature in new form§ 



§ 181. REPRESENTATION. — THE IMAGINATION. 301 

and products. (2.) It can idealize and apply the relations of ob- 
jects to extension and time. (3.) It can form and employ an 
ideal standard for the intensity and the direction of the activity 
of natural or spiritual agents, and for the material objects and 
acts which symbolize them. We will consider these acts in their 
order. 

§ 180. The examples already cited both prove and 
illustrate the fact, that the imagination very largely ™d C a™ D h! s 
acts in the way of reuniting and rearranging the ^a e in ati n he 
materials furnished to experience, and they also sug- 
gest the limitations under which this function can be employed. 
It is obvious, also, that the so-called parts of objects, and objects 
treated as parts, are as minute and numerous as any species of 
analysis can separate. 

There are sense-parts and sense- wholes, representative-parts and 
representative-wholes, and thought-parts and thought-wholes. 
A whole, as a building or tree, may be a part of the landscape 
with which it is connected ; while it is still a whole with respect 
to its doors, windows, roof, etc., and whatever else makes it quan- 
titatively complete. This is an example of sense-wholes and 
sense-parts. Again, the several properties or relations of the 
dwelling or the tree, its form, dimensions, color, smell, etc., are 
thought-parts, which can be combined into new wholes, by taking 
away and adding, as we have already seen. If these new wholes 
are individual, they are formed from representation ; if they are 
generalized, they are the work of thought proper, or logical 
wholes in the larger sense of the word. The synthesis of the 
creative imagination reaches as far and is applied as widely as 
the analysis of sense and thought can go. The imagination may 
reunite into varying products all that perception and conscious- 
ness separate or distinguish, and under every one of the rela- 
tions in which they apprehend their objects. Thesp relations are 
its only limits and laws. 

§ 181. We have already referred to the fact, that Theideaiiza 
the imagination, in every work of art, goes beyond, {atfonsofs 6 re 
and outdoes the perfection and refinement of nature. and Hm 5 in 

x art, and mo- 

The forms which sculpture moulds, and which draw- themat«cai 

x ' science 

ing outlines, are, as we have seen, more perfect than 

any which nature produces ; certainly, they are more perfect than 



302 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§181. 



any which the senses can discern, or which nature can furnish as 
models. These constructions cannot be explained by any pro- 
cess of analysis, or selection of the parts of real objects, whether 
this analysis is called mental, or is performed by sensible instru- 
ments. The lines and shapes of grace which have been copied 
in marble or drawn upon canvas, in respect to delicacy of tran- 
sition and ease of movement, far surpass those of any living 
being or actually existing thing. They are suggested by, but 
not copied from, any such beings or things. The story that 
the Grecian painter assembled from every quarter the most 
celebrated beauties, that he might borrow some charm from 
each, and combine all together in a perfect work, could never 
have been true. While it is true that nature, in some respects, 
far outstrips and surpasses what art can do, it is true, on the 
other, that the imagination, in her province, can go far beyond 
the attainments of nature. As we have already said, we even 
measure nature by some of the achievements of art. We ap- 
ply the ideals of the imagination still more frequently to try 
and to test what spiritual achievement furnishes. 

Those peculiar products which are employed in mathematical 
science, and which are known as geometrical and numerical 
quantities, cannot be made by any process of separation or com- 
bination of the parts of material objects. In matter there are 
no points, lines, surfaces, solids, and spheres, such as geometry 
conceives and reasons of. The unequal faces of a material cube, 
the rough edges formed by two adjacent faces of a solid, the 
obtuse corners in which three adjacent faces terminate, are none 
of them these objects of thought, nor are they wholes from 
which these can be evolved or separated as elements or consti- 
tuting parts. The line is not part of an edge, nor is the surface 
a part of the material face. If they were parts which could be 
separated by actual sense-perception from a whole, they must 
exist in that whole, or be distinguished as one of its material 
constituents. 

If it be said that these are distinguished and separated in the 
mind, that the process of analysis or abstraction is mental, it is 
still true that the mind can only separate what it first discerns. 
These objects cannot be discerned by bodily sense, nor can they 
be represented by simple imagination. They must be created 



§ 182. REPRESENTATION. — THE IMAGINATION. 303 

by the mind, for the mind to behold, when the mind beholds 
them. It may be properly said to construct or to create them^ 
first, in individual examples and applications, and then by rapid 
and easy generalizations. An individual point, line, surface, 
triangle, solid, sphere, is first constructed by the mind in relation 
to and by suggestion of a rude material occasion, and the pro- 
duct is then generalized by the ordinary processes and conceived 
as resembling every similar creation, so that whatever is true of 
the one, is readily affirmed of all. 

What is true of geometrical, is true also of numerical 
quantity. Numbers symbolize the relations of objects contem- 
plated in a series, as constituting a whole, divisible into unit 
parts. In order to conceive of number, the mind must first view 
objects in all these relations. But in nature, so far as the senses 
can know, there are no equal parts constituting divisible wholes. 
Whether the ultimate molecules or atoms of matter are or are 
not equal, none such are discerned by the senses. The successive 
mental states which consciousness observes and by which it first 
apprehends and measures the successive portions of time, are 
none of them observed in actual experience to be equally long 
or short. All these must be idealized in the imagination before 
they are separated by its analysis and combined in its creations. 
We proceed to 

§ 182. The spiritual acts and states of which we 

/ . 3. The forma- 

are conscious, differ from one another in respect to tion of an ideal 

, ,. . I'll i • • i standard for 

the direction which they take — i. e., in respect to the psychical acts 
objects on which they terminate, and hence to the 
quality of the affections — as well as in respect to the energy or 
intensity with which they are performed. But none ever reach 
a perfection in either respect which is so complete as can be con- 
ceived. Whatever or however we know, feel, or choose ; we 
can conceive it possible to surpass what we actually do or expe- 
rience. A perfect standard is created by the imagination. It 
cannot be derived from the parts which we observe in ourselves 
or others, because the parts are no more perfect than are 
the wholes. Consequently, whenever we perceive dimly and 
believe that we might perceive more clearly, or whenever we 
would feel warmly or purely, or choose rightly, and our feel- 
ings or choices do not satisfy our tastes or our conscience 



304 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§182, 



we then create for ourselves an ideal standard of spiritual 
achievement. 

In respect, also, to the expression of these ideals in material 
forms, the imagination creates and applies the ideals which it 
always aims but always fails to reach. Whether the medium 
of expression be language — the language of gestures, of lDoks, 
of tones, or of articulate speech — or whether it be lines, or color- 
or solid form, as employed by the draughtsman, the painter, 01 
the sculptor, it is all the same. The use which we can make of 
the medium is never so perfect as our ideal of what is possible, 
As we have noticed already, every such medium, physically re- 
garded, falls short of the psychical perfection which we can 
conceive — i. e., create — in the mind. When this medium or 
material is required, not only to set forth an idea of simple out- 
line, form, or color, but to represent another ideal of thought, 
feeling, and passion, then it is found to be doubly true that the 
ideals which the mind can frame, rise far above the reality 
which the voice or hand can execute. Hence it is that the ideal 
excellence of the poet, the orator, the actor, the musician, and the 
artist, is ever higher than his achievements — that the one flees 
before the other like its shadow, and can never be overtaken. 

The ideals of science and of art, of achievement and of duty, 
are the products of that form of psychical activity which is 
properly called the creative imagination. It is imaginative, 
because the representative or imaging power is conspicuously 
prominent in its functions. It is creative, because there is no 
counterpart in nature from which its objects and products are 
literally transcribed or copied. But this is not all. The reason 
and the feelings are conspicuous, and both rational and emotional 
relations are recognized and controlling. The creative function is 
rendered possible by the union of the thinking power with the 
imaging power ; the joint action of both resulting in those ideal 
products which address the intellectual and emotional nature. 

The ideals of the mathematical imagination are only possible 
when the imagination has been disciplined by thought. One 
chalk or pencil line is narrower than another, one of the hum 
use of mica is thinner than another. As we divide these lines 
and cleave off these laminse, we seem to approximate to the ideal 
line and the ideal surface, simply because the senses and the 



§ 182. REPRESENTATION. — THE IMAGINATION. 305 

imagination are less distracted and occupied with sense or imaged 
properties. The imagination selects, therefore, the line or sur- 
face whose thickness is least obvious to the senses, to suggest or 
represent the sole relation to space with which the intellect is foi 
the moment concerned ; or, which is even more satisfactory, it 
takes for a point an object whose dimensions are the smallest dis- 
cernible to the senses or picturable to the imagination, and con- 
siders it simply as moved or movable directly to another point 
like itself, and thus constructs in the imagination the mathemati- 
cal line. That is, it begins with an object or an image as far 
removed from sense as possible, and uses it so as to suggest the 
various relations which extended matter holds to space ; or, to 
speak more exactly, to other matter extended in space. By the 
imagined motion of this line, it proceeds in a similar way to 
construct the surface, etc., etc. The so-called approximation 
of the actual to the ideal line and surface, consists in the more 
facile suggestion of the relations in question by means of one 
reality rather than by another. 

The ideal of the artist depends on the relations of outline, form, 
color, etc., etc., to aesthetic pleasure; whatever may be its sources 
and kinds. He brings the line, the model, or the picture, as nearly 
as his materials and skill will allow, to a condition in which there 
shalJ be no drawbacks to the pleasurable effect which is sought 
for. As long as a single distracting or inconsistent feature or 
property is prominent, so long is his ideal unreached. As this 
will always be the case from defect of materials or defect of skill, 
eo long will it be true that he can never make his work absolutely 
perfect, and that his ideal of what he imagines might be possible, 
will never be reached. 

The ideal of the inventor is some agent, or combination of 
agencies, that are freed from the limitations which pertain to the 
'ordinary machines or instruments. These he illustrates to him- 
self by fondly and sometimes obstinately conceiving of his model 
only in those relations of adaptation and capacity which he 
knows it to possess, and overlooking or denying other limitations 
to which it is liable. 

The ideals of psychical and moral attainment suffer under limi- 
tations of another sort. We select the most satisfying example 
of the actual which we can find, and fixing our attention upon 



306 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§182. 



those of ivs relations which we desire to contemplate, and with- 
drawing it from all defects and limitations, we make the example 
an ideal of the psychical power or the moral excellence which 
we wish exclusively to contemplate. 

If the ideal excellence is contemplated as an attainable end 
of our being, or is enforced by the authority of conscience or the 
will of the Supreme, then that which was a conceivable ideal is 
viewed in still other relations. It is accepted as possible : though 
an ideal of the imagination, it is enforced as reasonable and obli- 
gatory. 

The result of this analysis is but another illustration of the 
interdependence of all the powers upon one another, and espe- 
cially of the higher functions of the imagination upon thought 
and reason. It enforces and explains the near affinity of the 
imaging with the thought-power. It also indicates the advan- 
tage which language and music may have over painting and 
sculpture in expressing and suggesting what color and form 
cannot convey. 

These truths also enable us to understand and explain how it 
happens that all ideas, however refined and elevated, are in some 
sense founded upon and related to the actual experience of each 
individual. A person born and nurtured upon a plain, who had 
never seen a hill or a mountain, can scarcely imagine the charm 
to the eye and the excitement to the mind which such scenery 
imparts. One who has never been upon the sea, can neither 
picture to himself nor to others the wild sublimity of an ocean 
tempest. The oriental, basking in the heat of a tropical sun, 
and always surrounded by the fruits, the foliage, and the flowers 
that such a sun alone can nourish, cannot form an ideal picture 
of an arctic winter. Nor can the Scandinavian, out of the pale 
sunlight of his brightest days, or the most luxuriant vegetation 
of his starveling summer, construct an adequate representation 
cf the exuberant life, and the glowing intensity of a tropical 
landscape. 

The actual life of every painter and every poet, in the mate 
rials which it furnishes, must largely determine the direction and 
characteristics of his imaginative power. From the writings of 
Dante, of Milton, of Scott, and of Bunyan, as well as from the 
pictures of Raphael and Murillo, of Gainsborough and Wilkie, 



§ 183. REPRESENTATION. — THE IMAGINATION. 307 

one can easily conclude as to the place of their birth, the kind 
of education which they received from the books and men and 
scenery with which they were conversant. 

§ 183. It follows that the imagination is capable 
of steady growth, and requires constant cultivation. tion isaSSe 

This training and growth are not, however, occa- culture! 
sional, but constant ; they are not the results of sepa- 
rate efforts, which are consciously directed to some definite ends 
of creation, but are the consequents of an activity which is spon- 
taneous, irrepressible, and often excessive. Indeed, in all minds 
the creative imagination mingles more or less prominently with 
the other mental operations, always modifying and sometimes 
greatly disturbing the acting of these powers and their results. 
In sense-perception, the imagination too often selects for itself 
what it will see or hear, and brings a report accordingly of what 
it thinks it has seen and heard. After the desires are grown 
strong and the character is fixed, the shaping spirit of the imagi- 
nation enters largely as a modifying influence into the perceptions. 
In the observations of consciousness, and the reports which it 
records of what it has seemed only to observe, the same influence 
and the same effects may be traced of its creative energy. The 
observation and the record are both disturbed by the power to 
notice what we are anxious to find, and to leave unobserved, or to 
imagine that we cannot see, what we do not wish to find to be 
true. In the act of recalling for ourselves or communicating to 
others what we may have actually observed or experienced, the 
creative imagination often intrudes, consciously or unconsciously 
biassed by the desire to please ourselves or our fellow-men. The 
frequent and strange untrustworthiness of the memory, can be 
accounted for only by the selecting or idealizing activity of the 
imagination, when it seems to be simply recalling the actual past. 
Inasmuch as the thought-power, in its various acts of reaching 
general conceptions and conclusions, chiefly depends on the 
fidelity of the representative power in reproducing the actual; 
whenever it creates instead of recalling, all the results of think- 
ing must be disturbed. In this way the imagination may and 
does enter very largely into the acts of generalization, inference, 
and deduction ; disturbing and misleading all. 



308 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 184. 



Is developed 



§ 184. More generally we may say, this creative 
from the earn- power is developed at the earliest period of our ex- 
latest periods istence, and is busy in all ages and conditions of our 
human life. Childhood, in some of its aspects, is the 
most literal, and the most observant of reality ; yet even then 
the shaping activity of the imagination is always busy, filling 
the real world with another of fancies and dreams. The most 
trivial and unsuitable objects are sufficient to excite its action. 
The rude and unfinished toy is more acceptable to the child than 
the more costly and elaborate, because it leaves more room for 
the constructive power. It is all the better if the greater part 
of the work is left for this to complete and supply. The sports 
and plays of childhood are little romances, prompted and acted 
over for the simple exercise and delight of the imagination. In 
later years the imagination is always busy. The interest which 
each man takes in the position in life which he holds or aspires 

I after; in his employments, his friends, and associates; or the 

dislike and disgust which he conceives for each and for all, 
arises from the ideal lights with which the imagination invests 
them. The eye of the painter looks every landscape into a 
picture, and idealizes every face that it beholds. 

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet 
Are of imagination all compact. 

Midsummer- Night' 8 Dream. Act v. 

This constant activity of the creative power explains its rapid 
growth, and its development into the capacity for sudden and 
surprising achievements. 

Whenever an occasion calls for the manifestation of the 
power thus trained and matured, it acts as by the force and with 
the promptness and precision of apparent inspiration. Whether 
the exigency be that of the artist, the poet, or the inventor, the 
creative power formed by the ceaseless activity of years meets 
its requirements from the resources that it has been gradually 
providing. These resources may consist in part of the countless 
creations which it has shaped in connection with its perceptions 
and reveries, and which are again summoned back by the 
memory when first these images are needed ; or, the resources 
brought to the exigency may be the dexterity which has been 



§ 185. REPRESENTATION. — THE IMAGINATION. 309 

acquired by use, and which dexterity consists in the power of 
so controlling the associating power that it shall yield the 
very materials which are wanted for the imagination to work 
upon. 

In no other way can we explain the rapidity, the precision, 
and the success with which the constructing and inventive power 
seems to act when it is tasked to its utmost energy and produces 
its finest results. 

§ 185. The fact has been noticed, that the creative 

, . . • -i n i Special appli- 

lmagmation is present by its actings with all the cations of the 

_ , t t 'ii imagination. 

other powers 01 the soul, and determines the char- The poetic im- 
acter of their products. We have also seen, in our 
analysis of ideals, that the converse is true as well. All these 
powers are present in varied proportions and energies in those 
activities which are recognized as the acts of the imagination, 
and give a varied character to what are called its products, 
whether they appear in the form of poetry, fiction, the fine arts, 
philosophy, ethics, or religion. 

Of these, the poetic imagination is the most interesting, and 
invites to a special analysis. Poetry may be defined, that use of 
the creative power which is employed for the gratification of 
the emotional nature in the production of pictures more or less 
elevating in their associations, which are fixed and expressed by 
means of rhythmical language. 

The sources from which the poetic power derives its materials 
are as numerous and extensive as the universe of matter and of 
spirit, and yet but few of these materials subserve the proper 
aims of the poet. While the poet may lawfully appropriate 
truth of every kind, provided it serves his purpose, yet it is pre- 
eminently that truth which holds or may be made to assume some 
relation to man which is of use in poetry. 

This human truth, which these pictures suggest, illustrate, or 
enforce, must be that which is within the comprehension and 
reach of all men. It is not the truth of the schools, nor of any 
special and limited society, not that which is capable of being 
conveyed in abstract or technical words or understood by a select 
few after a special training, but it is the truth which is open and 
intelligible to all men upon certain implied and easily recog- 
nized conditions. This is the first of the three characteristics 



310 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§185. 



which are recognized by Milton in his brief description of poetry 
as " simple, sensuous, and passionate." 

Poetry should indeed be simple, because its products are de- 
signed for the use of all men ; and its images, thoughts, and 
words should be easily comprehended by all who have attained 
certain advantages of culture, and have been trained to a certain 
degree of thought and feeling. It should also be sensuous — that 
is, it deals with images, not with generalized and scholastic lan- 
guage. It presents pictures to the mind's eye, not refined and 
subtle reasonings to the thought-powers. It introduces action 
into every scene. It is eminently concrete and picturesque. It 
should also be passionate — i. e., its simple and pictured truth 
should come from a soul that is animated by warm and elevated 
emotions. The presence of feeling as a requisite of all that com- 
position which is called imaginative, is not always recognized so 
distinctly as it deserves to be. Without feeling, and, in general, 
without feeling of a higher kind, the mere power to create is of 
little worth, and its results are of little interest. Indeed, without 
it the power will not be so matured into a predominant energy, 
or be so regulated, as to become a ready instrument at the service 
of its possessor. But with it, the creation of the kind of pictures 
in which the emotions delight, becomes a pastime and an occu- 
pation, and poetry is to the poet its own "exceeding great re- 
ward." Inasmuch as only the higher emotions act with a steady 
and intellectual pressure in the refined occupation of poetic cul- 
ture and composition, the images which association presents and 
the imagination detains and reconstructs, are of an elevated 
character; they assume the lofty and ennobling character of 
ideals in the better sense of the word. Hence it becomes so gen- 
erally true that poetry is almost necessarily elevating in its na- 
ture and influence. Hence it has been held to have something 
in it that is divine. 

The ends of poetry are not always elevated. Poetry may serve sim- 
ply or chiefly to amuse. When this happens ; when its pictures are 
employed for this end, and the associations under which they are 
present, and the emotions which they excite, are not especially enno- 
bling, the poetic imagination is, in the language of later critics, called 
the fancy. When the aims are higher than simple gratification, 
and therefore involve more elevated associations and feelings, it 



§186. REPRESENTATION. — THE IMAGINATION. 31] 

is dignified as the imagination by eminence, and so designated. 
The adjective imaginative follows very closely this higher sense 
of the word. In this activity the image-making power simply 
plays or sports with images for their picturesque effects and 
the amusement which they give — or arranges them for ends of 
illustration or pleasure. Though it abounds in images, it lacks 
the loftier attributes of the higher imagination. 

§ 186. It is peculiar to the poetic imagination in all 
higher and lower forms that language is its medium. It i 8 linkage m 
is not essential that this language should be metrical ; 
though a rhythmic movement, and the regular return of similar 
syllables in measured accent greatly heightens its effects. The 
poetic power is also shared by the novelist, the dramatist, and 
the orator. But poetry must always employ language, and for 
this reason it essentially differs from painting, sculpture, and even 
music. Painting and sculpture create images indeed, but they 
fix them permanently upon the canvas or embody them in 
marble. But poetry can only suggest them by words ; it por- 
trays its images only, as by words it wakens in the imagination 
of another, images similar to those which the poet himself con- 
ceives. If the imagination that receives is feeble, slow, and per- 
verse, it is in vain that the poet tries to excite it to follow his 
lead. But if it is strong, quick, and sympathizing, it may be 
aroused by the words of the poet to finer creations than even the 
poet himself has known. The suggestive power of words gives 
to the poet a marvellous advantage in the greater breadth of his 
field and the variety of his effects. The painter and sculptor ap- 
parently present all their work to the eye. It is true that this 
work is better appreciated by one eye than another. In one 
sense it takes an artist to interpret an artist ; but even with this 
allowance, the range of their indications is narrow, and the possi- 
bility of manifold suggestions is limited. But words have a ca- 
pacity to suggest more than they directly convey, and hence to 
take up into their import a multitude of pictures according to 
the variety of uses to which they are applied. The word whose 
literal import is prosaic, trivial, or mean, when used by genius 
in a new application, becomes poetic, picturesque, and elevating. 
The material which in common use is cold, conventional, and dry, 
has capacity, by dexterous combinations, to awaken delightful 



312 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 187. 

imagery, and to kindle exalted associations. In this way 
language itself becomes permanently enriched and elevated 
by the fact that it has been employed by men of poetic 
genius. 

§ 187. The relation of the imagination to thought 
phTc^magina- has been the subject of much discussion, and has 
given rise to no little diversity of opinion. Many 
have contended that its influence is unfavorable to the operations 
of the intellect in the discovery of truth ; that it distracts the 
attention, biasses and misleads the judgment, and disqualifies for 
any of the reasoning processes. On the other hand, the fact is 
undisputed that the men who have been most distinguished in 
philosophy, especially as discoverers or inventors, have been re- 
markable for reach and glow of imagination. Striking examples 
of the combination of the poetic imagination with eminent phi- 
losophical genius are numerous. We name Plato, Kepler, Gali- 
leo, Bacon, Newton, Leibnitz, Davy, Owen, Faraday, and Agassiz. 
A moment's reflection will show how this must necessarily hap- 
pen. The objects of present observation must always be limited 
in number. They must reappear in the form of representations. 
The facts with which the philosopher has to do must come to 
him in the form of images, when he would discern their various 
relations and subject them to the processes of thought. It is im- 
portant that these should be readily represented. This can only 
happen when the associative power is wide in its range of rela- 
tions, and quick in its activity. These qualities almost invariably 
accompany, if they do not necessarily involve, great energy of 
the creative power. 

But whatever may be thought of the importance of a vivid 
imagination, as furnishing the materials for the philosopher, to 
invention it is entirely essential ; indeed, without an active imagi- 
nation, philosophic invention and discovery are impossible. To 
invent or discover, is always to recombine. The discoverer of 
a new solution for a problem, or a new demonstration for a 
theorem in mathematics, the inventor of a new application of a 
power of nature already known, or the discoverer of a power 
not previously dreamed of, the discoverer of a new argument to 
prove or deduce a truth or of a new induction from facts already 
accepted, the man who evolves a new principle or a new definition 



§ 187. REPRESENTATION. — THE IMAGINATION. 313 

in moral or political science — must all analyze and recombine in 
the mind things, acts, or events, with their relations, in positions 
in which they have never been previously observed or thought 
of. This recombination is purely mental. Every discovery is, 
in fact, a work of the creative imagination. 

It is true the power of thought must attend the operation. 
Unless the representations and combinations are made and regu- 
lated with reference to the ends of thought, they will be made in 
vain. But the range of these pictured objects must be wide; 
every one of them must be vividly conceived, that all the attri- 
butes, and analogies, and relations may come before the eye of 
the mind. The more vividly this presentation is made, provided 
the processes of analysis and comparison go on with equal energy, 
the wider is the field of discovery and the greater is the chance 
of success. The world of images is also far more plastic than the 
world of reality. Its materials come and go more quickly than 
real objects. More can be crowded at once into the field of view. 
The mental analysis and synthesis required, can be more rapidly 
performed upon the shadows which the mind summons to its 
service, than upon the things which it can slowly call up and 
slowly survey. 

But there are special reasons why the peculiar type of imagi- 
nation which the poet requires is closely allied to that which is 
essential in philosophic genius. To the higher imagination, as 
required by poets and orators, there is always requisite the power 
to interpret the indications or analogies of the beings and phe- 
nomena which they observe. The intensity of interest that fixes 
and holds the mind in the patient attention of the philosopher 
is closely allied to that strongly absorbed and controlling enthu- 
siasm which holds the poet to the images which his fancy 
summons or creates. Both dwell in such a world with an enthu- 
siasm which is not easily understood by others. That which 
maintains the interest of each, is the passion of each for the 
image-world which he recreates. That which gives to each his 
mastery over this world, is the familiarity which results from 
long-continued practice in calling up its objects and in moulding 
them at his will. Such a mastery, arising from such a continuity 
of effort, can only be attained by that passionate interest which 
is the secret of genius, whether genius labors for the ends of 
14 



314 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§188. 



scientific or poetic truth ; whether the end for which it labors is 
the truth of science that addresses the intellect, or the truth of 
feeling which controls the heart. 

In the communication of scientific truth there can be no question 
that a large measure of imagination is of essential service. He 
who would amply illustrate, powerfully defend, or effectively 
enforce the principles and truths of science, is greatly aided by a 
brilliant imagination. This, of all other gifts, is the best security 
against that tendency to the dry and abstract, the general and the 
remote, to which the expounder of science is exposed by reason 
of his familiarity with principles which are strange to his 
pupils and readers, and which need to be continually explained 
and illustrated by fresh and various examples. The philosophic 
writer or teacher who is gifted with imagination is more likely to 
be clear in statement, ample in illustration, pertinent in the 
application, and exciting in the enforcement of the truths with 
which his science is conversant, whatever may be its subject- 
matter. 

§ 188. The practical and ethical uses of the imagina- 
and ethical tion are numerous and elevated. These are suffi- 
ciently obvious from the single consideration, that 
the standards by which we regulate our aims and estimate our 
achievements must always be ideal creations. They are con- 
tinually formed and reformed by the imagination. These ideals, 
so far as the particulars of the character and the life are concerned, 
may vary both in their import and in the vividness with which this 
import is conceived. If they are consistent with the conditions of 
human nature and human life ; if they are conformed to the phy- 
sical and moral laws of our nature, and to the government and 
will of God, they are healthful and ennobling. Such ideals can 
scarcely be too high, or too ardently and steadfastly adhered to. 
But if they are false in their theory of life and happiness, if they 
are untrue to the conditions of our actual existence, if they in- 
volve the disappointment of our hopes, and discontent with real 
life, they are the bane of all enjoyment, and fatal to true happi- 
ness. 

It is not what we actually attain or possess that makes us 
happy or wretched, but what we think is essential, or possible, or 
just for ourselves to attain. The ideal standard by which we 



§188. REPRESENTATION. — THE IMAGINATION. 315 

measure and judge our attainments in all these respects, is 
a most important element of satisfaction or discontent. It is 
of little consequence what a man has, if he imagines that he 
must have something more in order to be truly happy. If his ideal 
contemplates self-sacrifice, suffering, and evil, as possible condi- 
tions of good, he will be still more secure of a happy life. If it 
reaches forward to another scene of existence, and brings before 
him the blessedness of a character perfected by suffering and 
made fit for the purest and noblest society conceivable, his happi- 
ness on earth may even be augmented by disappointment, sorrow, 
and pain. 

If, on the other hand, these ideals are factitious or unreason- 
able, they become the source of constant wretchedness. If a 
man, to be happy, must be as rich or as fashionable, as successful 
or as accomplished as he dreams of, all his actual enjoyments pass 
for little or nothing till his ideal desires are gratified. These 
are the standards by which he measures his good. If he 
fails to realize these, he cannot be satisfied. 

The ideals we frame of life and happiness must involve a more 
or less positively ethical character. We cannot imagine what 
we are to be and to become in fortune and success, without pro- 
posing more or less distinctly what we ought to be in diameter 
and to perform in action. Hence, in a certain sense, what a man 
aspires to become, has already ethically decided what he is. His 
aims and standard are the reflex of his wishes and his will, as 
well as the assurance of what he can achieve in the future. 

The ideal standard of duty may be constantly corrected and 
improved. From his own experience of the effects of acts or 
habits, or his observation of these effects in others, a man may 
supply what he has omitted to observe, or correct that in wdiich 
he has erred, and so advance to a higher and more perfect rule 
of feeling, of manners, and of life. In this way a community 
may rise or sink, may advance or go backward. Every man may 
also advance the ideal of others by his good life, by the realization 
in himself of what is worthy, and his more perfect manifestation 
of it in appropriate and beautiful acts. The contemplation 
of fictitious characters, elevated and ennobled by ideal beauty, 
has served to quicken and enforce the ethical ideal of thousands 
of susceptible minds. The poet, the novelist, and the dramatist, 



316 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §189. 

may quicken the fervor, and instruct the minds, may elevate the 
Pastes, and reform the lives of all their readers. 

§ 189. The relation of the imagination to religious 

Relation of the ..... . _ . ° _, * 

imagination to iaitn is interesting and important. Ine objects 01 our 
faith, by their very definition, have never been 
subjected to direct or intuitive knowledge. And yet the imagi- 
nation pictures these objects as real and most important. What 
are the materials out of which it creates them? Whence the 
suggestions which it idealizes into more refined and spiritual 
essences ? By what authority does it invest these creations with 
verisimilitude and impose them upon the assent of the intellect, 
as representing the most real and important of all truths ? What 
analogies are there between the finite and the infinite which 
authorize the imagination to use the one to symbolize the other, 
and which justify its faith in its own symbolic creations? 

Of the Divine Being as Infinite, we have no direct experi- 
ence. All our direct apprehensions of spiritual attributes and 
relations are of the limited only. It is by the limited that we 
reach the unlimited even in thought. 

Conceding that we can think the infinite, can we also image it? 
We cannot. The sphere of the imagination is only the finite. 
All the pictures which it can construct are of limited objects. It 
is by means of such pictures only that it can image its concepts 
of the infinite, if it attempts to image these at all. That it can 
adequately picture them, no man believes. What is pictured by 
the image, is some limited example of some real being which sug- 
gests or exemplifies the thought-relations required. 

These thought-relations are : existence, power, knowledge, ori- 
gination, foresight; — all which, we say and believe, are both finite 
and infinite. But when we seek to image these as infinite, wa 
select some finite examples that illustrate these attributes ; we 
choose an image to give life and reality to the analogon of that 
which we believe to be unlimited in respect to its sphere and 
energy. 

But these utmost efforts of the imaginative power to reach the 
infinite and the absolute, are always attended by the belief that 
they fall short of the reality ; that no enumeration of finite objects, 
however interesting in themselves, or significant they may be. 
are at all adequate to illustrate the divine ; that no continuation 



§ 189. REPRESENTATION. -THE IMAGINATION. 317 

of space or of time can express the divine eternity ; that no 
quanta of dependent beings can fitly represent the Being who is 
self-existent. To have the materials that shall enable a man fitly 
to image the infinite, one must himself be infinite. There are, 
indeed, analogies between the created and the creating spirit; else 
the one could not know the other in any sense or to any degree. 
But these analogies are too few and too inadequate to enable or 
authorize man to penetrate into the secret things which belong to 
God, or to make conceivable the divine by any images which 
man applies so freely and so rationally to limited things. The 
imagination is not easily content to use the analogies which are 
placed at its command, and to refrain from using those which it 
may not lawfully employ. It would fain go further than it can 
or ought. To do this, has been its constant temptation. To re- 
fuse to go as far as it may and ought, is weak and unphilosophi- 
cal ; but to attempt to go further, is always irrational, and, it may 
be, impious. 

In respect, also, to the capacities and experiences of the spirit- 
state, — when separate from a human body or any material 
organization — the imagination is limited in the materials of its 
working and the products which it creates. We know the soul 
only in its connection with the body. To image any of its acts 
or states without a constantly present background of bodily sensa- 
tions, is to imagine a mode of existence that seems to us imper- 
fect and unnatural. We cannot imagine the soul without the 
body by which to know and act, and without material objects to 
act upon. If we attempt this, we bring to our aid some attenuated 
matter for the soul's habitation and instrument, and we surround 
it with a world of objects that wear the forms of material things. 
But here the question continually presents itself, How far can we 
image that world by this, and the soul's experiences in that 
world, by its experiences in this? Can we properly imagine 
either? May we apply the pictures drawn from this life to illus- 
trate or make conceivable the scenes and events of another state ? 
We not only can, but we must; yet ever with the caution, that 
the images which we use be not allowed to suggest more than 
the data authorize. 

It should not surprise us to find that the imagination, when it 
rises into faith in the objects of the unseen world, invariably uses 



318 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§189. 



pictures that are borrowed from the world of matter, and phrases 
all its language from materials furnished by this imagery. It 
cannot do otherwise. However lofty its conceptions may be, 
however soaring its aspirations, undoubted its beliefs, or ardent 
its hopes, all these must be pictured and expressed in the images 
taken from that world of matter which is adapted to a soul that 
knows and acts through a material organism. If there be a 
revelation that is conveyed by human language or addressed to 
the human soul, it must in this respect be accommodated to the 
capacities of the soul that is to understand and accept it. The 
fact that a revelation must be conveyed by such a medium, does 
not disprove that it is possible, or at all detract from its im- 
portance or authority. It cannot be argued against its divine 
origination or supernatural confirmation, that it conforms itself 
in this respect to the nature of the being to whom it is given. 

If, however, we regard the necessary limits of imagination 
and faith, we shall not expect that either will do more for us 
than lies in the capacities of either. We shall not confound the 
images of analogy with the intuitions of direct knowledge. We 
shall not mistake the accessories of illustrative imagery for the 
realities of the concepts or truths which this imagery sets forth. 
We shall not revel in sense-pictures of the fancy, as though the 
sensuous in them were literal truth. We shall not be imposed 
upon by pretended seers, because, forsooth, their pictures of the 
unseen are so minute, so copious, and so beautiful, or so confi- 
dently set forth ; overlooking the circumstance that these visions 
may be merely the residua of a too luxuriant fancy, or the 
creations of an excited and perhaps an insane imagination. The 
recognition of the human limitations in the divine, will teach us 
to interpret the divine aright, while it may save us from accept- 
ing as divine that which is only limited and human. 



§ 190. THOUGHT-KNOWLEDGE DEFINED AND EXPLAINED. 319 

PART THIRD. 

THINKING AND THOUGHT-KNOWLEDGE. 

CHAPTER L 

THOUGHT-KNOWLEDGE DEFINED AND EXPLAINED. 

Thinking and § l^O. T ne ^ T ^ kind of knowledge of which the 
the thought intellect is capable, is thinking, or thought. The 

power defined. * ' _ . 

term thought, when used in this special or technical 
sense, is applied to a great variety of processes, which are 
familiarly known as abstraction, generalization, naming, judging, 
reasoning, arranging, explaining, and accounting for. These 
processes are often grouped together, and called the logical, or 
rational processes. 

The importance and intimate relationship of these processes is 
seen by their place with respect to the higher knowledge and attain- 
ments of man. It is by thought only that we ca T i form those concep- 
tions of number and magnitude which are the postulates and the 
materials of mathematical science. By thinking, we both en- 
large and rise above the limited and transient information which 
is gained by single acts of consciousness and sense-perception, as 
we lay hold of that in both which is universal and permanent. 
By thought, we know effects by their causes, and causes through 
their effects : we believe in powers, whose actings only we can 
directly discern, and infer powers in objects which we have never 
tested nor observed : we explain what has happened by referring 
it to laws of necessity or reason, and we predict what will hap- 
pen by rightly interpreting what has occurred. By thinking, we 
rise to the unseen from that which is seen, to the laws of nature 
from the facts of nature, to the laws of spirit from the phe- 
nomena of spirit, and to God from the universe of matter and 
of spirit, whose powers reveal His energy, and whose ends and 
adaptations manifest His thoughts and character. 

These processes give us the most important part of our know- 
ledge, and qualify us for our noblest functions. Thought makes 
us capable of language, by which we communicate what we 



320 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§190. 



know and feel for the good of others, or record it for another 
generation ; of science, as distinguished from and elevated above 
the observation and remembrance of single and isolated facts ; 
of forecast, as we learn wisdom by experience ; of duty, as we 
exalt ourselves into judges and lawgivers over our inward desires 
and intentions ; of law, as we discern its importance and bow to 
its authority ; and of religion, as we believe in and worship the 
Unseen, whose existence and character we interpret by His works 
and learn from His Word. 

But what it is to think, and how thinking should be denned, 
may be more easily understood by a concrete example. We 
take a familiar object, as an apple, and proceed to think it, in 
the various processes already named. 

First of all, we know it as a being or a something, as dis- 
tinguished fiom nothing ; next, we think or know this being as 
possessed of and distinguished by attributes or properties which 
we can separate in thought from the being to which they belong. 
We go further : we observe in other objects — apples — attributes 
like those which we discern in this; we see the objects to be 
similar in color, form, taste, etc. In this way we form the 
mental product called a general notion or concept of the apple, 
or of apples in general as we say, which we can analyze and 
define. To abstract and to analyze, is to think. Next, we re- 
store, or think back, these general concepts to the individual 
apples, and in so doing, we divide them into higher or lower, 
wider, or narrower classes. Classification is involved in thinking. 
As we proceed, we mark and fix what we have done by lan- 
guage. We give names to each of these attributes, to the con- 
cepts and things formed and denoted by several attributes 
united, and to the classes and sub-classes into which they are 
separated. Thinking is necessary to language. Next, the apple 
holds relations to space and time. It is both extended and endur- 
ing. The perception of the apple conditionates or involves the 
knowledge of both space and time. By thought and imagina- 
tion we are enabled to separate the object perceived from both 
time and space, and to construct in space the various geometri- 
cal figures, as well as to conceive and define them by their neces- 
sary attributes or properties. Moreover, all sorts of entities, 
whether things existing, or thought-things, whether attributes or 



§ 190. THOUGHT-KNOWLEDGE DEFINED AND EXPLAINED. 321 

beings, can, by the common relations to time in the mind that 
thinks them, be thought in the relations of number. Again, the 
object — the apple — is believed to be produced from a tree, 
beginning as the germ in the blossom, and gradually expanding 
into the ripened fruit. It is known also to be dependent upon 
the agencies of heat and moisture acting together with the living 
tree. Thought, connects these as cause and effect, and finds in 
the phenomena thus connected, the relations of the powers and 
laws of their causative agents. We proceed to a higher act of 
thought knowledge. By observing the powers and conditions in 
any class of apples, their habit of growth, the soil, situation and 
temperature favorable to their successful cultivation, we infer 
that the same are required in all cases for this kind of fruit, and 
confirm the suggestion by experiment. But we do not rest with 
the induction . of powers and laivs. We observe that the apple 
is useful and pleasant as food. We notice that it is the product 
of cool climates, and can, with proper care, be preserved through 
the winter. We do not merely observe and record these as facts, 
but we connect them by the relation of adaptation, or fitness to 
the wants of man. 

The nature and processes of thought might be illustrated by 
an example selected from the world of spirit. By consciousness, 
we know only individual states of perception or feeling. But we 
detain or repeat one and another ; we observe their likeness or 
unlikeness ; we form concepts ; we group them in classes which 
divide the individuals to which they belong ; we fix and record 
the products of our acts by a name ; we find common causes, 
powers, and laws for similar phenomena ; we discern the adapta- 
tions of spiritual objects to one another and to the world of 
matter, and thus bind together the world of matter and spirit, in 
the unity and harmony of one comprehensive plan ; the thinking 
of man interpreting in these ways the thoughts of God. 

From this particular example of thought we derive the fol- 
lowing definitions : To know by thinking, is to unite individual 
objects by means of generalization, classification, rational ex- 
planation, and orderly arrangement, — Thought-knowledge is that 
knowledge which is gained by the formation and application of 
general conceptions. 

Thinking is a species of knowledge ; but knowledge has been 

14* 



322 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§191. 



defined as the apprehension of objects in their relations. Think- 
ing, is the apprehension of objects as generalized and their implied 
relations. 

Some persons may question the propriety of designating these 
several processes by the terms thinking and thought, for the reason 
that these words sometimes signify to imagine, or believe on in- 
sufficient evidence. 

On the other hand, it should be remembered that thinking and 
thought, in the best English usage, denote, in a general sense, 
the higher as distinguished from the lower operations of the 
intellect. There are no single words so appropriate as these, 
which can be set apart to the technical service and designation 
of the operations of the rational faculty ; no other terms for these 
operations are in actual use whose common signification is at once 
so comprehensive and so definite as are these. 

§ 191. If it be difficult to find an appropriate term 
foi^thfpower *° s * an( l f° r &U these higher processes, it is almost as 
etc thinking ' difficult to find or select an appellation for the power 
which qualifies us to perform them. The intelligence 
and the intellect have been thus appropriated, but they are also 
used for the capacity of the soul for every species of knowledge, 
the lower as well as the higher ; for the power to know by sense 
and imagination, as well as the power to know by general con- 
ceptions. The understanding is sometimes employed in this very 
general sense, and sometimes limited to a single and special func- 
tion, as by Coleridge and others, after Kant. The judgment is 
used, likewise, in a wider and a narrower sense. The reason 
seems better fitted than almost any other term, and yet the rea- 
son is used for the very highest of the rational functions, or else 
in a very indefinite sense for all that distinguishes man from the 
brutes. It remains for us to choose between the rational faculty 
and the power of thought, or briefly, thought. For brevity and 
precision we prefer thought. It is scarcely necessary to observe 
that, like perception and representation, and many subordinate 
terms, thought is used at one time for the poiver, at another for 
the act of thinking, and at another for its products. Thus we 
say indifferently, "Man is endowed with thought as well as with 
sense :" 'Sits fixed in thought the mighty Stagyrite:" " A penny 
for your thoughts /" 



§ 191. THOUGHT-KNOWLEDGE DEFINED AND EXPLAINED. 323 

The power of thought may be considered in two aspects : as a 
capacity for certain processes or functions ; and for eliminating and 
generalizing certain fundamental conceptions or relations. In the 
one of these aspects it performs the several acts which we have 
enumerated, of generalizing, judging, reasoning, etc., the most 
of which are usually called logical processes, because they are 
more or less intimately related to deduction or reasoning. In 
the other, it is viewed as the discoverer of certain native concep- 
tions or intuitions, and the propounder of certain first truths, or 
first principles ; which are also called necessary and universal 
propositions, axioms of reason, or, metaphysical conceptions and 
metaphysical truths. 

Hamilton refers these two processes to two faculties, the elabo- 
rative and the regulative, the one of which elaborates or works 
over the materials furnished by the lower powers, according to 
the conceptions or rules which the other furnishes or prescribes. 
In this he follows Kant very closely, who calls the logical 
faculty, the understanding, and the power which controls its 
beliefs by ideas, the reason. 

It is more satisfactory to consider the two in conformity with 
the analogy which we discern in the other powers of the soul ; 
the one as the capacity for certain definite acts or processes of 
knowing, which we conssiously exercise and employ ; and the 
other as the unconscious source of these conceptions, according 
to which the material of knowledge must arrange itself by the 
very constitution of the thinking power. 

The thinking power, viewed as the capacity for certain pro- 
cesses, thinks in various methods, and matures certain products, 
the two being often denoted by the same word. These several 
products are called the forms of thought, or though t-formation i. 
These forms are "the concept, the judgment, the argument or 
syllogism, the induction, and the system. 

As the discerner or the discoverer by intuition of certain neces- 
sary conceptions or relations, the thinking power is said to know 
or assume certain forms of being, according to which it performs its 
operations, and constructs its products or forms of thought. These 
are called indifferently, forms of being and forms of knowledge, 
for the reason that the mind can only know what is or exi'ts, 
and according to the relations in which it exists. Borne of tfc;;v 



324 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§192. 



forms of being or forms of knowledge are time and space, sub- 
stance and attribute, cause and effect, means and end. 

§ 192. The power of thought, as a capacity for 
thought to the certain psychological processes, is dependent for its 

lower powers. . , , , 

exercise and development on the lower powers of the 
intellect. These powers furnish the materials for it to w T ork with 
and upon. We must first apprehend individual objects by means 
of sense and consciousness, before we can think these objects. 
We can classify, explain, and methodize only individual things, 
and these must first be known by sense and consciousness. 

These lower powers are not only necessary to furnish the objects 
for thought to work upon, but they are developed earlier than 
the higher powers. The infant must go through a training 
of the eye and the ear for months, before it begins to name and 
classify with effect. It is the conscious subject of a multitude 
of mental states, before it gathers the most obvious under a 
general conception. The discipline of attention must be for a 
long time enforced, before the developed mind can learn to apply 
the commonest concepts or to affix the simplest names. The 
conceptions of cause and effect, and of means and end, are not 
developed till the intellect has become still more mature. 

To the development of thought, the representative faculty is 
also largely subservient. The individual object must not only bo 
apprehended in order to be thought of, but it must be recalled 
again and again. To thought, the discernment of similarity is 
required ; and in order to this, the past must be frequently con- 
fronted with the present, and the present must be compared with 
the past. Objects striking for their likeness or their difference, 
must be recalled by the memory and revived to the imagination, 
in order that like objects and like phenomena may be grouped 
and arranged in the rudest classification. If the classification is 
to be perfected to anything like scientific exactness, the memory 
and imagination are to be tasked still further in order that one's 
thought-products may be just to the reality of things. 

But while the thought-power, in its various operations, is thus 
shown to be developed later than the several forms of direct 
cognition, it should not be supposed that it springs into perfect 
and mature energy by a single bound, or that the acts of in- 
fant perception are not affected by its rudimental activity. The 



§ 193. THOUGHT-KNOWLEDGE DEFINED AND EXPLAINED. 325 

human intellect is a unit, and the action of one power is tinged 
or modified by the feeble energy of all the others. The sense- 
perceptions of the infant may seem to be more feeble and less 
mature than are those of the young of the brute. The higher 
powers may meanwhile seem to lie torpid long before they are 
called into distinct activity. But before they are revealed to the 
conscious subject of them, or are expressed in the simplest forms 
of language, they give direction and character to the perceptions 
of sense. They impart to the human eye a cast of dawning 
intelligence which distinguishes it from the keener eye of the dog 
or the eagle. 

§ 193. Thinking, again, may be distinguished as 
concrete and abstract. In concrete thinking, we know abstract think- 
of thought-conceptions and relations only in their 
application to individual or concrete objects. We should say 
more exactly, we know individual objects under or by means of 
the relations which thought furnishes. In abstract thinking we 
separate these conceptions and relations from any and all indi- 
vidual objects. We consider them apart by abstraction, and 
sometimes treat them as though these conceptions and relations 
could have an independent existence. In concrete thinking, we 
proceed as we have described in § 189. 

In abstract thinking, we separate or abstract from every indi- 
vidual object the generalized conceptions which we produce by 
thinking, as also those by means of which we think : as the con- 
cept, the judgment, the argument, the inference and the system, 
on the one hand ; and substance and attribute, cause and effect, 
means and end, on the other. We even abstract and generalize 
our very acts or processes of thinking, and view them apart from 
the individual examples or cases in which they actually occur. We 
ask, What is it to conceive, to generalize, to judge, to reason, to 
infer — nay, what is it itself to think? We discuss the nature 
and origin of these conceptions, and their relations to one another, 
to the objects to which they are applied, and indeed to all our 
knowledge. 

Concrete thinking is performed by every human being whose 
powers are fully developed. All men freely apply its concep- 
tions and relations. By means of them they know sensible and 
spiritual objects, so far as they know these at all. A stone or ap 



326 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§194 



apple, a horse or a dog, a house or a church, a spirit or a persou, 
each and all are known as beings, and are distinguished and de- 
fined by certain attributes or properties. One of these acts upon 
another, as a cause producing an effect, etc. In myriad examples, 
objects are familiarly known by us as substances and attributes, 
as causes and effects, as means and ends. In the concrete form, 
all these conceptions are present in the language, and familiar 
to the minds of the most uninstructed men. 

But when these conceptions are abstracted, and viewed apart 
from individual beings, they are not made familiar to the mind 
without a special discipline. It is only a few men who possess 
the tastes or the training which qualify them readily to deal with 
or rightly to understand thought-conceptious when abstracted 
from individual things. Skill in using, and discrimination in 
understanding them, can only be acquired by concentrated and 
patient efforts. 

§ 194. Thinking is aided by language, and, to a 

Relations of T ^ . 

thought t . great extent, is dependent upon it as its most efficient 
instrument and auxiliary. But thinking is not con- 
stituted by, but, on the contrary, itself originates and gives form 
and law to language. 

The connection between thought and language is so intimate, 
that we shall have occasion to refer to it again, and again. One or 
two general remarks in respect to it, seem here to be in place. The 
reason why thought requires such an instrument and assistant as 
language, is, that the objects of thinking are generalized objects, 
and to such objects there are and there can be no realities 
actually existing. The results or products of our thinking are 
not manifested by any changes which are actually affected in 
material or spiritual objects. It is only by language — the 
sound to the ear, and its symbol for the eye — that the products 
of thought activity can be fixed so as to be the objects of recall and 
future use. Hence words spring into being as fast as definite 
conceptions are formed. Hence it is as natural for man to speak 
as it is to think, and man " speaks because he thinks." The 
name fixes, preserves, and exhibits the transient concept as in a 
crystal shrine, both hard and clear. The proposition embodies 
the judgment for the use of the man who first thinks it, and 
who utters it to stimulate the thinking of others. In applying 






§ 195. FORMATION OF THE CONCEPT OR NOTION. 32? 

names, we must enter somewhat into the nature and properties 
of the objects for which they stand. In defining terms, we must 
be guided to their meaning by observing the things to which 
they are applied. In accepting or rejecting propositions, we 
must think of the- relations of the objects which they concern. 

It follows, also, that the study of words must be a study and 
discipline of thought. To master a language that is rich in its 
vocabulary, requires that we contemplate the nicer shades of 
thought which are expressed by the endless variety of the con- 
ceptions that are embodied in its words. If it is complicated 
in its structure, we must discriminate the delicate relations 
which this syntax expresses or suggests. No language can be 
dead to the intelligent student. Its delicate tissue reflects the 
varying shades of thought, feeling, and opinion that run through 
every part of the fabric, like threads of silk and gold. 

But, on the other hand, words in no sense constitute thought, 
as some hastily infer. Language is simply thought expressed, 
though the thought is made permanent by being expressed. It 
is formed by the thinking power, because this requires for de- 
velopment and perfection a sensible expression of its inner pro- 
cesses, and seeks a permanent embodiment and record of their 
results. 



CHAPTER IL 

THE FORMATION OF THE CONCEPT OR NOTION. 

§ 195. Thinking has been already denned as that T* 16 Presses 

« . . J involved in 

series ot processes by which we form and applv formi n« the 

. . rr J concept. 

general notwns or concepts. It is obvious that the 
first act in this series of processes is to form or de- 
velop these products. We begin with the concepts of material 
objects, such as a stone, an apple, a horse ; and observe that such 
objects must be perceived, in part, at least, before we form 
general notions of them. We do not insist that the process of 
perception should be complete before the act of generalizing 
begins. It is necessary, however, that a percept should go befora 



328 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§ 195. 



the concept in the order of time, as it is the foundation for it in 
the relation of logical subordination. A general notion requires 
individual objects to which it can be applied ; and individual 
objects in the material world can only be known by perception. 
The mind begins to form concepts as soon as it notices that 
several perceived objects are different as individuals, and yet are 
in any one respect alike. Before generalization, they may be 
known confusedly or known vaguely. As soon, however, as 
they are distinguished as not the same, and yet as united by a 
common likeness, the process of generalization has begun. This 
process is possible even with single percepts. If ten patches of 
red color, of the same form, dimensions, and intensity, were pre- 
sented to the eye, the mind might gather, or conceive, or grasp 
them together, by their common redness, and form a general 
notion of them ; thus uniting them as one by the single simi- 
larity of color. If these ten red discs of color, by the use of the 
remaining senses, are afterwards known to be ten red apples, i. e. 
if other points of likeness are perceived, the generalization is 
more complex in its materials, but the process is the same. 

The process involves acts of analysis, of comparison, and of 
generalization. The mind must notice that which is common, 
and distinguish it from that which is diverse. This act is an 
act of comparison. Its appropriate object is likeness. It dis- 
cerns a quality as similar. It takes this similar to be the same, 
and, so regarding it, finds it in every one of the individual 
objects. This similar something, conceived as common to many 
objects distinguished as individuals, is a general conception, 
notion or concept. 

The mental acts which we have described, are familiarly 
known as follows: The act of analytic attention by which the 
similar element in each one of any number of objects or pheno- 
mena is separately observed or noticed, is usually called ab- 
straction, because the mind draws it away from the other parts 
or relations. Kant and Hamilton say that abstraction refers to 
that from which the mind withdraws itself, while it 'prescinds the 
element to which it attends. Thus, in the example cited, the 
mind prescinds the redness, and abstracts its attention from all 
the remaining attributes. 

The next step is, to perceive by comparison that the several 



§ 196. FORMATION OF THE CONCEPT OR NOTION. 329 

objects to which we thus separately attend, are alike. The next 
step is, to consider these several similars as the same, the one 
something which is common to all the individuals perceived. 
This is to generalize — to make general — more properly, mentally 
to think or affirm a common something of all these individuals. 
The similar red, or round, or sweet, or bitter, is made one, and, as 
one, is regarded as common to each of the different individuals. 
Which of these acts is first performed, is immaterial — whether the 
mind seems to generalize before it abstracts, or the reverse ; or 
whether it analyzes, compares, and generalizes all in one. It is 
all the same as to both process and product, whether we separate 
the redness from the first apple which we perceive, before we 
apply it to the many, or are stimulated by observing many red 
apples to notice and abstract that which is alike and common, 
or whether the points of difference excite us to generalize the 
one or more elements in which the objects are alike. 

Again, when this common something has thus been generalized 
from like objects, it can be applied to— i.e., affirmed or predicated 
of — any and every other object to which it is appropriate. Thus, 
spherical, after being thought of a single class, as of apples or 
balls, may be thought of all objects that are round — as of the 
vast spheres which are huug in the heavens, or of globules so 
minute lj to be indiscernible by the naked eye. 

It has been already observed, that these processes develop and 
presuppose the distinction of substance and attribute — i. e., of being 
and distinguishing relations. The individual apples of which 
we think the redness are beings, the redness is their common 
attribute. What is the nature of, and what the authority 
by which avo make this distinction, we do not propose here to 
inquire. For our present purposes, it is sufficient that we call 
attention to the fact that it is fundamental to the process of 
forming the notion, and that it must be assumed as real, and be 
firmly believed by the mind. (Cf. §323.) 

§ 196. The product of the processes considered, is 

,\ , . The product, its 

called a concept or notion. We emplov these terms nature and ap- 

, , , , . . , . . pellation. 

because they may be made precise in their import 
and technical in their use. Conception is sometimes used ; but 
conception is, in our English philosophy, used indiscriminately 
for any and every object of the mind's cognition, or else is 



S30 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 19d 

arbitrarily limited, as by Dugald Stewart, to the individual 
object of representation, and thus made equivalent to image. 
Abstract general conception (or even general conception) is suffi- 
ciently precise in its import, but is too cumbrous for common use. 
Concept and notion have each, in their etymology, a special signi- 
fication appropriate to one aspect or feature of the product to 
which both are applied. Concept signifies something grasped or 
aeld together, and refers us to the act by which different similar 
attributes are treated as one, or the same act in which separate 
individual beings are united as one by their common attribute or 
attributes. Notion, on the other hand, indicates that which is or 
may be known by certain signs or marks, notee — i. e., constituting, 
defining, and distinguishing attributes. Both terms may be 
properly employed as technical and scientific designations. 

The reality of any such mental product or thought-object has 
been questioned, chiefly by those who have misunderstood or 
misconceived its nature. Its import or nature has been imper- 
fectly or vaguely estimated even by many who have believed in 
its reality. It is only by explaining its nature, both negatively 
and positively, that its reality can be vindicated and established. 

The concept is not a percept, nor is its object an object as per- 
ceived. This last is strictly individual ; the concept is uniformly 
general. In order to prove this beyond question, we have only 
to ask what the mind knows when it sees a man, and what it 
thinks of when it utters the word man, and applies it in thought 
to the human species. No one can doubt that the two objects of 
cognition are diverse. 

The concept is not a mental image, or the object of the mind's 
cognition in representation. We recall an individual percept, 
one or many ; or we form, by creation, some image unlike any 
which we have in fact perceived. Both are clearly distinguish- 
able from that which the mind thinks or knows, when it uses a 
general term. 

We state positively: — The concept is a purely relative object 
of knowledge. This is its distinctive feature, that it holds definite 
relations to objects of sense and consciousness. As a mental 
product and mental object, it is relative, being formed by the 
mind and understood by the mind as indifferently common to 
single objects ; which objects only enable the mind to understand 



§ 1 96. FORMATION OF THE CONCEPT OR NOTION. 331 

its import. The individual things to which it relates, give 
to it all its significance and utility. Without these, it is 
a no-thing, an unintelligible and unreal fancy. This peculiarity 
of the concept is implied in its various appellations. It is 
called a general, that is, capable of being thought of many 
individuals, which are thereby grouped into or conceived as a 
class. It is called also a predicable, by its very nature capable 
:>f being affirmed or thought of single objects. It is a univer- 
sal — i. e. y as pertaining alike to all the individuals to which 
it belongs. 

Again : as being this common and relative thing, the concept 
respects only the similar attributes of individuals, or such as might 
be supposed to be alike. It respects those elements which 
analysis can separate as individually distinct, and comparison can 
unite as alike. Attributes, properties, and relations, are the only 
objects which it respects. These are first discerned, then com- 
pared, then united into a single thought-object. Herein lies the 
difference between the act of a brute and the act of a man in 
perceiving objects that are alike. In one sense, the brute may 
perceive what is similar as readily as a man ; in some cases, even 
more quickly, for his senses may be more keen. If he has been 
ill-treated by any other animal, or frightened by any object, 
every thing like either will be avoided at once. But the brute does 
not attend and analyze as does a man. Hence he cannot dis- 
criminate so as to abstract ; or, at best, the degree and range 
of such efforts must be very limited. His power to compare and 
discern the like and the unlike would for this reason be lame and 
f eeble,if no other could be suggested. Should it be granted that the 
brute can discern similar attributes, it has no power at all to con- 
ceive or think the similar as the same. It cannot form and use a 
concept as founded on attributes and as common to individual 
beings. Hence, the brute is incapable of language. He may 
utter sounds and cries which instinct extorts and to which the 
instinct of the hearer responds, and thus the voice and ear of the 
animal tribes may serve some of the useful and social ends which 
language accomplishes in man ; but the brute is incapable of 
using words as the signs of concepts, because he is incapable of 
thought He cannot form and use a concept, and therefore he 
can neither speak nor understand a single word. Even the parrot 



332 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§197. 



that miracle of talkers, is incapable of language, and never utters 
what deserves to be called a word. 

We observe still further, that all which the concept contem- 
plates or signifies, is the common attributes which are discerned 
in the individuals to which it is applied. These attributes are 
its proper and sole import or signification. The concept, as such, 
is not at all concerned with the number of individuals in which 
these attributes are found, or with anything else which may be 
true of them. It is all the same to our thinking and to the con- 
cept which we form by thinking, whether the tree of which we 
make and use the notion, is here or there ; is high or low ; is the 
tree which we have often seen and admired, or the tree which is 
ten thousand miles distant ; is the tallest of the cedars of Leba- 
non, or of the firs of California, or the most dwarfed that exists 
on the coldest mountain summit. It is even indiffer whether 
it actually exists or not ; it is only essential that it be formed 
by the mind from the actual constituents of every object that is 
properly called a tree. 

§ 197. Concepts are distinguished in their applica- 
tion, as concrete and abstract. The concrete notion 
contemplates attributes, and is applied to beings ex- 
isting. The abstract notion treats attributes as though 
they were themselves such beings. Man and human 
are concrete; humanity is an abstract notion. The concrete 
notions are applied directly to an actually existing being, for pur- 
poses of classification and language, which need not here be 
explained. The abstract humanity is applied to designate a being 
that is purely fictitious, but which, in language and in thought, 
is treated as though it possessed actual existence. The attribute 
is conceived as a being, in having attributes affirmed of it; as 
when we say, humanity implies liability to error. It has adjectives 
prefixed to it, as in the phrase, our original humanity. It is 
divided into classes: humanity is either refined or degraded, 
etc. In short, it is capable of being treated in every way, as 
though there were living beings called humanities. But when 
we analyze the real meaning of language, and the thoughts of 
those who use it, we find that the only beings distinguished by 
the mind are the living men who are endowed with human attri- 
butes. 



Concepts as 
concrete and 
abstract, as 
simple an 1 
complex ; their 
content and ex- 
tent. 



§ 197. FORMATION OF THE CONCEPT OR NOTION. 008 

Concepts, again, are still further distinguished as simple and 
complex. Those notions which are made from a single attribute, 
are simple. Those which are made of more than one, are com- 
plex. Simple notions are called, by Locke, simple ideas. They 
cannot be analyzed or decomposed into any constituent elements. 
The mind directly discerns them by its various powers of know- 
ledge. Such words as white, whiteness, green, greenness, etc., 
etc., are usually given as the names of simple notions. It would 
be more exact to say that we treat these notions as simple, be- 
cause we do not ordinarily distinguish in thought, or by lan- 
guage, the discernible shades of white and green. Those which 
are properly simple, would be such shades of color as can ba 
distinguished from every other. On the other hand, chalk, 
chalky, are complex notions, because they signify more than one 
attribute. So, man and human are complex spiritual notions, for 
they contain many attributes. 

No thing or being actually existing is represented by a simple 
notion. A grain of sand or a mote in the sunbeam, is complex, 
for it has form, dimensions, color, weight, etc., etc. Nature gives 
us no simple ideas. She touches us through too many avenues 
of knowledge. She leads us to observe varied attributes in 
every existing thing. We, in our thinking, analyze and separate 
her complex objects, and reconstruct and recombine the elements 
which, at her prompting, we have abstracted and generalized 
In this way we separate and reconstruct the elements or attri- 
butes of material objects as nature exhibits them to us, as of 
plants, and animals. Thus, all the concepts which are expressed 
by the general terms that form the staple of every language, are 
constructed by the mind. They are passed from one mind to 
another. They are fixed in words and recorded in books and 
literature. The names of the objects that human art and skill 
has constructed for use or beauty, likewise stand for the complex 
of simple notions which we observe in these objects. The arti- 
ficial creations, such as are conceived by human invention and 
spring from human society, the crimes which are defined by 
human law, the offices and relations of government, the signs 
and proofs of property, the rights and duties of men, all these 
are complex notions, which are made and sustained by civilized 
men, and interest most profoundly their hopes and fears. These 



334 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§197. 



are still further removed from the notions and terms more usually 
conceived as abstracta, but, like these, they are susceptible of 
being so analyzed as to be carried back to living beings. But 
these all are complex notions, and some of them are exceedingly 
complex in their constituent elements. If we consult a dic- 
tionary, and rui the eye down its lists of words, we shall be 
surprised to find how large a portion of them stand for these 
artificial creations, these complexes of abstracted properties. 

Still farther, notions are technically distinguished by their re- 
lations of content and extent, or, as they are often termed, their 
comprehension and extension, their depth and breadth. 

These relations grow out of the very nature of the notion, as 
has been shown by our definitions. A notion cannot be a notion, 
unless it has these two relations. It can neither be formed nor 
used unless both these relations are considered. 

The content of the notion is the attribute, or attributes, of 
which it consists. It is its contained attributes considered as a 
unit or whole. Those notions whose content we have the most 
frequent occasion to consider, are complex notions. Every 
simple notion has a proper content in the single attribute which, 
when conceived as common, is made a concept. Such complex 
notions as chalk, snow, milk, febny, burglary, theft, man, spirit, 
body, soul, legislation, monarchy, republic, a state, etc., have so 
manifestly a sum of contained attributes, that it is with especial 
propriety that we speak of their content. These constitute their 
meaning or import. When thes3 are fully stated, the notion is 
defined. They are also called the essence, or essential constituents, 
of the notion, becaus3 toy make up or form its being ai a 
thought-product or thought-creation. 

The extent of a notion originally and properly signifies the 
number of individuals to which it is applicable. If we could 
know, by actual enumeration, how many horsas or men there are 
a* any time existing, their sum would be the extent of the notion 
horse. We rarely, however, have occasion to consider indi. 
viduals ; for these are divided again and again into larger and 
smaller groups, to each of which there is a fixed notion and 
name. These divisions are effected by adding to the content of 
the notion which includes a greater number of individuals, an 
additional attribute— in the case of the horse, an attribute of 



§ 198. FORMATION OF THE CONCEPT OR NOTION. 335 

color, perhaps ; and we have a new content, white horse, black 
horse, etc., giving an extent of fewer individuals. In many 
cases, we designate the concept thus newly-formed by a separate 
name, as pony, for a small horse, charger, hunter, roadster, etc. 
So trees are divided by means of notions, whose content is given 
r„j deciduous and non-deciduous. The latter are divided into 
pines, firs, etc.; the firs are again divided into hemlocks, 
spruces, etc., each having some attribute not belonging to the 
content indicated by the word fir or fir-tree. In consequence of 
these divisions or groupings of individuals into broader and nar- 
rower classes, the extent of the notion in actual use always 
stops short with subordinate groups, and does not carry us down 
or back to the included individuals. These individuals are 
always intended, however, and the subordinate classes are said 
to constitute the extent, because they, in their turn, are applicable 
to and comprehend individuals. 

As the content of a notion is exhibited by definition, so the ex- 
tent is shown by division. This division is effected as the indirect 
consequence of adding to the content of the notion a new attri- 
bute, which immediately narrows its extent. The adding a new 
attribute, or new attributes, for this end, is called determination, 
or the act of bounding off, or limiting. 

It follows that, as the content of a notion is increased, its extent 
is diminished. Hence the maxim : the content is inversely as 
the extent. Both propositions are true, the greater the extent, 
the smaller the content ; the greater the content, the smaller the 
extent. 

§ 198. In forming the notion from, and applying 
the notion to, individual objects, the intellect classifies \ ts Origin 'ISS 
these objects ; that is, it groups them into divisions 2 reilt 8p ^ 
which are broader and narrower in their extent ; and 
of course higher and lower when ranked according to their place 
in a system. This consequence follows from the fact that nature 
has so constructed individual beings that they are capable 
of being grouped into larger and smaller divisions, by means of 
their resembling attributes; and from the desire in the human 
soul which meets this fact of nature by connecting objects in an 
orderly arrangement. 

The first efforts at classification are necessarily rude and im- 



336 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§19& 



perfect. Children when left to themselves group together objects 
in singular combinations and discern resemblances between 
things which older people never would think of connecting. In 
the poverty of their language they apply the words which they 
possess, to the strangest uses, on the very slightest and the most 
whimsical analogies. They soon learn better, as we say. That 
is, they take from older persons the conceptions and classifications 
which have been made before them. In other words, they think 
over again the concepts that are made ready and presented for 
their use, in the words of which they learn both the import and 
the application. In learning to talk they are constrained to fall 
in with those classifications which previous generations have 
made before them, and have recorded in the language which they 
have left behind. 

Savages do not classify under the same restraints. When novel 
objects are presented to them, they usually seek out some concept 
or word already known and familiar, and extend it to the novel 
object by some resemblance, however forced or violent this may be. 
The goats which Captain Cook carried to the Pacific Islands 
were called by the natives homed hogs : the horse on a like 
occasion was called a large dog. The dog and the hog being the 
only quadrupeds with which these savages were familiar, these 
novel animals were taken into the only concepts and names that 
were ready for their reception. When the Romans first saw 
elephants, they called the animal Bos Lucas or Lucanus, a Lu- 
canian ox, from the province in Italy where they were first seen. 

The classifications of science differ from those of common life in 
being founded on a more exact observation, and directed by the 
special rules which are furnished by scientific principles. These 
may be certain assumed ends or known powers or laws of nature 
which were discovered long after the classifications had been per- 
fected which are recorded in the words of common life. The 
classification of animals into vertebrates, articulates, mollusks, 
radiates, and protozoans, and the subdivision of the vertebrates 
into mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes, are very different from 
those represented in the words horse, ox, whale, snake, hawk, 
quail, robin. Neither the so-called natural nor the artificial 
systems of botany give us what we know under the household 
names of the lily, the rose, the pink, and the violet. And yet 



§ 198. THE FORMATION OF THE CONCEPT OR NOTION. 337 

these common names do as really classify their objects as do 
scientific names. To classify is no secret of science, no process 
reserved for the select few who are initiated into a magic art, but 
it is as universal and necessary as the act of thinking. The 
classifications of common life may be as rational and as useful 
for the ends of common life as are those of science for its .special 
uses. They are founded on the obvious appearances of objects 
to the senses and the mind. They are adapted to the uses of men 
of ordinary culture. Indeed what wealth of thinking does -every 
cultivated language embody and represent ! Each one of its 
words has gathered into its subtle essence the results of the repeated 
and refined observations of the men who perhaps by successive 
efforts at last reached the concept which each single term enshrines. 
In like manner the technical nomenclature of a single science 
when finished and arranged, is a transcript of all the discrimina- 
ting thoughts, the careful observations, and the manifold experi- 
ments by which the science has been formed. It represents in 
brief, all the most careful definitions and the most complete and 
best classified divisions which the devotees to its special objects 
have perfected by their labors. 

Classification is nearly allied to systemization. The division 
of objects into classes which are broader and narrower, has a close 
affinity with their orderly arrangement in classes which are 
higher and lower, through a succession of divisions and subdivi- 
sions. Both result from the application of notions in their extent 
to existing objects or to objects which are conceived to exist. 

Classification and systemization, are the characteristics and 
consequences of all thought-knowledge and preeminently of 
scientific knowledge. They are indispensable to enable us to 
grasp individual facts and to retain our observations. They are 
an intellectual convenience and an intellectual necessity. But 
they do not constitute the whole of thought or the whole of 
science, Though scientific knowledge is of necessity classified 
and arranged knowledge, yet much more than this is true of it. 

We have entered within the threshold of our analysis and 
comprehension of thought-knowledge, but the light which shines 
from the inner sanctuary casts its radiance only upon those 
objects which are the nearest to our view. It remains for us to 
consider other acts, involving profounder relations in the consti- 
15 



338 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§199. 



tution of the universe, in the methods and forms of our thinking, 
and in the products which this thinking evolves. 

§ 199. It will not be amiss, however, to ask at this 

How much do , n • • -, jj»«* j i 

we gain by stage oi our inquiries, what addition do we make to 
concept?? by the knowledge which we gain by perception and con- 
sciousness, by superinducing upon it the acts or pro- 
cesses of thought which we have thus far considered? What do 
we know more about an object seen or experienced, by general- 
izing its attributes, determining its class, or assigning to it a 
name ? We may answer this question by asking two or three 
others. What more does a man know about a single apple by 
calling it an apple, a fruit, a plant-product, an organized being, 
than he does by seeing, feeling, tasting, and smelling it ? We 
answer, its common relations, i. e., properties, attributes, and 
uses. When we think or intelligently say of a sense-object, it is 
an apple, we both think, and impliedly say or it, it is like a 
multitude of other sense-objects, in many most important respects, 
as of color, taste, size, etc. When we think or know it to be a 
fruit, we enlarge still more widely the sphere or extent of the 
objects to which it holds relations. So when we think it to be a 
plant-product 

That was no inconsiderable act which was signified by the re- 
cord which describes the various living animals as brought to Adam 
that he might name them. The capacity to name them implied 
an insight into their nature. For this reason it must of neces- 
sity be true, if we suppose the original man to have been en- 
dowed with the requisite discernment, that " whatsoever Adam 
called every living creature, that was the name thereof." It 
seems to be a trifling thing for the child to be able to affix suita- 
ble names to the objects and beings which first attract its atten- 
tion. At first thought the act is trivial, mechanical, parrot-like, 
as it were, to attach an articulate sound to one or more similar 
objects ; but when we view it as implying the power of intelli- 
gently applying this name to a still larger number of objects which 
are in many respects unlike and yet alike, it becomes an act of 
the gravest import. It indicates an important development of 
the soul's action, and the evolution of a new product. When 
the child asks, What is it? meaning thereby, What is it called V 
it really asks, What is the nature, what are the relations, of the 



§ 21)1. THE NATURE OF THE CONCEPT. 339 

object to which the name belongs, as it learns one by one what 
these relations are, and notices in what they are alike, and in 
what they are unlike. 

That was no slight achievement of Aristotle, to seize upon, bring out and es- 
tablish the truth that the concept of an object either declares what it i8,ov at least in- 
dicates the direction which must be taken in order to find this. The concept is the 
permanent whot-uess or what -sort-o f-ness, which may be thought of the things to 
which it is applied. It is the to ri %v elvai, {. e., its real and permanent nature. 
To ask what a thing is, according to Aristotle, is to take the first step and per- 
form the first of the processes which are essential to its complete mastery. It is 
to propose the first of those questions, the answers to all of which carry the mind 
through the entire circle of scientific knowledge. Aristotle also recognises the 
intimate connection of the concept with the word, calling the two by the same 
term, o ^°yo?. 

§ 200. The what which the concept and the word 
both propose to communicate, is not the direct ob- kn^wtSg^ by 
servation which presentation gives, but the higher byTntuttions. 1 
and more comprehensive knowledge which thought 
aims to achieve. It is not the knowledge that a being is, but the 
analytic and comparative knowledge of its relations. 



CHAPTER III, 

THE NATURE OF THE CONCEPT. — SKETCH OF THEORIES. 

In the preceding chapter we have considered the nature of the concept in a 
general way, so far as was required in the analysis and explanation of the psy- 
chological process by which it is formed. We return to it a second time for more 
careful consideration. 

§ 201. The nature of the concept and its relation to real or ex- 
isting objects has been the occasion of endless speculation, of fan- The doctrines 
tastic theories, and of sharp and persistent controversies in every ° f s ° crate ? and 
period distinguished by philosophical inquiry. Socrates was the istotle. 
first to insist upon the importance of forming concepts of the ob- 
jects of our knowledge in order that the permanent and essential might be elimi- 
nated from that which is accidental and transitory in individual objects. But he 
taught little or nothing in respect to the nature of the concept, or of that in the 
object to which the concept is the counterpart or correlate. Plato took up the in- 
quiry where Socrates left it; insisting more abundantly than he upon the neces- 
sity of this higher knowledge, and showing that in attaining it we must define 
and divide— must go from the individual to the general, by successive inductions, 
and so on from one step co another, till we reach that which exists of and by 



340 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§202. 



itself — that which is alone the permanent object of [true] knowledge. This is the 
idea, y 'Sea or to eiSos. But what this idea is, and what are its relations to the con- 
cept, he does not accurately teach ; where it exists he does not assert ; whether in 
the object itself, or in the mind of the Creator, or in the mind of each thinking 
man, he does not define. He seems to teach that ideas, or the idea, have an exist- 
ence and essence separate from all these, that they are eternal and incorruptible, 
existing before all temporary and perishable beings, and imparting to the perisha- 
ble and phenomenal in these beings all their dignity and interest. Ideas are re- 
alities, things and events are their shadows. But whether by these representa- 
tions, he intends only personification and poetic fiction, or exact scientific defini- 
tion, is not always easy to decide. 

As against Plato, Aristotle insists that the only real beings or substances are 
existing beings or things, the npSirai ova-iai., or primary entities, as he calls them. 
He is distinctly aware that there are other sorts of beings besides these. The 
SeiiTepaL ovcriai or second entities are distinctly discriminated from the npcorat ova-Lai, 
or individual beings. He aims to show in what sense the former are so called, 
and how they are related to real beings, or, in modem phraseology, to show the re- 
lation of concepts to real existences. This he does by distinguishing between 
matter and form. Matter cannot exist without form. Every existing being has some 
determinate form. There can be no form without matter. The one requires the 
other. The two are correlates, seeking each other, as Aristotle figuratively 
speaks, by a natural appetency. The form only is conceived by the mind. 
What the mind conceives of a being is its essence, to tc tjv elvai. J n modern lan- 
guage the concept is made up of the essential qualities that are common to several 
individuals, omitting those which are undiscriminated; these last being matter. 

Aristotle set out with the determination to avoid those personifications which 
so abound in Plato. But he did not entirely succeed. Should we concede that 
he was not himself betrayed into hypostasizing these metaphors, he did not 
secure his disciples from this error. So it happened that the ideas of Plato and 
the forms of Aristotle were both regarded as actual realities, and as such, fur- 
nished fruitful material for the subtleties and controversies of their earlier disci- 
ples and commentators, in the decadence of the Greek philosophy. 

$ 202. It was, however, among the scholastics of the middle ages 

Porphyry's that such discussions became conspicuous, in the schools of the 
questions and 
the scholastics. Realists, the Uonceptualists, and the Jyoioma/ists. The immediate 

occasion of these discussions and controversies was furnished by a 

passage from Porphyry, in the preface to his Introduction to the Categories of 

Aristotle. This Introduction was translated from the Greek by Boethius, and 

a brief passage proposed the problem for the different sects which we have named — ■ 

who received their appellations from the different solutions which they gave to it. 

" Mox de generibus et speciebus, illud quidem, sive subsistent, sivc in solis nudis 

intellectibus posita sint, sive subsistentia corporalia sint an incorporalia, ct utrum 

separata a sensibilibus posita, circa ha;c consistentia dicere recusabo. Altissimum 

enim negotium est hujus modi et majoris cgens inquisitionis." In other words, 

the questions which naturally suggest themselves concerning Universals are the 

following : 

' Have. Universale a separate existence } or do they exist in the mind only f If they 

have a separate existence, are they corporeal or incorporeal ? Are they separable 

from sensible objects or do they subsist in these only?' 



§ 203. THE NATURE OF THE CONCEPT. 341 

The extreme Realists answered these questions in the spirit of Plato, or rather 
of the doctrine which Aristotle ascribed to Plato, viz. : that Universals have an 
existence that is separate from and independent of individual objects. They even 
contended that they exist before these, in rank and creative power, certainly in 
point of time. These views were formulated in the motto Universalia ante rem. 

The moderate Realists adopted the creed of Aristotle that Universals have a 
real existence, but only in individuals. Their motto consequently became Univer- 
sal i a in re. 

The Conceptualists and Nominalists agreed in this that individuals alone have 
jreal existence; and that Universals, both genera and species, are formed by the 
mind, by bringing together many similar objects and designating them by com- 
mon terms. 

They differed in that the extreme Nominalists held that the name only is general 
and is employed to avoid an indefinite number of proper names which would be 
otherwise required; while the Conceptualists interposed a concept between the 
name and the objects collected into a class. The motto of both Conceptualists and 
Nominalists was Universalia post rem. 

The differences of opinion that ripened into these separate philosophical sects 
began to be manifest in the ninth and tenth centuries. It was not, however, till 
the second half of the eleventh that different philosophers and theologians were 
commonly known by these appellations, and that the doctrines themselves became 
the occasion of earnest and bitter strife. These divisions reappeared at intervals 
and were not finally terminated before early in the fourteenth. 

$ 203. In modern times the diversities of opinion in respect to 
the nature of the concept have been as great, and the controversies Mo ^ ern 1 ml °" 
well nigh as active as they were among the schoolmen. The 
same questions have in fact been agitated, and the same difficulties encountered, 
with this difference — that the form which these questions have taken has been 
more generally psychological, rather than metaphysical. This was no more than 
was to be expected from the general course of modern philosophy. But in the 
recent German speculations, the logical and metaphysical direction of thought 
has preponderated over the psychological and inductive. 

Hobbes, a nominalist of the extremest school, says, Human Nature (c. 5, $ 6) 
"The universality of one name to many things hath been the cause that men 
think the things themselves are universal; and so seriously contend that besides 
Peter and John and all the rest of the men that are, have been, or shall be in the 
world, there is something else that we call man, viz. : man in general, deceiving 
themselves, by taking the universal or general appellation for the thing it signi- 
fieth." * * ® "It is plain, therefore, there is nothing Universal but Names." In 
The Leviathan (p. i., c. iv.) he says : " There being nothing universal but names, 
for the things named are every one of them Individual and Singular, one Uni- 
versal name is imposed on many things for their similitude in some quality or 
accident." 

Locke, on the other hand, who was a Conceptualist, says in his Essay (B. IV. 
C. vii..$ 9), "Does it not require some pains and skill to form the general idea of 
a triangle, [which is yet none of the most abstract, comprehensive, and difficult,] 
for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor 
scalenon ; but all and none of these at once. In effect, it is something imperfect 
that cannot exist [i. e., in fact, or actually] ; an idea wherein some parts of several 



342 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§203. 



different and inconsistent ideas are put together. 'Tis true the mind in this im- 
perfect state has need of such Ideas, and makes aH the haste to them it can, for 
the conveniency of communication, and enlargement of knowledge." That he 
was not a Realist appears from the following (B. III.,c. iii.,§ 11 sqq.) : * * " It 
is plain by what has been said, that General and Universal, belong not to the real 
existence of things ; but are the inventions and creatures of the understanding, 
made by it for its own use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas." 
"When therefore Ave quit particulars the generals that rest [remain] are creatures 
of our own making, their general nature being nothing but the capacity they ere 
put to by the understanding, of signifying or representing many particulars." 
He argues at length against the Realistic doctrine of permanent essences or spe- 
cies. "Whereby it is plain that the essences of the sorts, or (if the Latin term 
please better) species of things, are nothing else but these abstract ideas." " To 
be a man or of the species man, and to have a right to the name man, is the same 
thing. Again, to be a man, or of the same species man, and have the essence of 
a man, is the same thing." 

To these doctrines of Locke, Leibnitz, in his Nouveaux Essais, 
G.W.Leibnitz, takes the following exceptions : He denies that the essence of the 
species is only an abstract idea, and asserts that the generality of 
such ideas consists in the mutual resemblance of individaal things, and this re- 
semblance is areality. (Nouv. Ess., B. III.,c. iii..$ 11.) 

Berkeley, Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge, thus attacks the 
doctrine of Locke. After describing the doctrine as commonly received, he pro- 
ceeds : " Whether others have this wonderful faculty of abstracting their ideas, 
they best can tell; for myself I find, indeed, I have a faculty of imagining, or re- 
presenting to myself the ideas of those particular things I have perceived, and of 
variously compounding and dividing them. I can imagine a man with two heads, 
or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the 
hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the 
body, but then whatever hand or eye I imagine must have some particular shape 
and color. Likewise the idea of man that I frame to myself, must be either of a 
white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a mid- 
dle-sized man But I deny that I can abstract one from another or con- 
ceive separately those qualities which it is impossible should exist so separated ; 
or that I can frame a general notion by abstracting from particulars in the man- 
ner aforesaid." And yet Berkeley, in another passage concedes the power of ab- 
straction so far as this: "A man may consider a figure merely as triangular, with- 
out attending to the particular qualities of the angles or relations of the sides. 
So far he may abstract. But this will never prove that he can frame an abstract, 
general, inconsistent idea of a triangle." In respect to generalization also, he 
concedes th3 following: "An idea, which considered in itself, is particular, be- 
comes general by being made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas 
of the same sort. To make this plain by an example : suppose a geometrician 
is demonstrating the method of cutting a line into two equal parts. He draws 
for instance, a black line, of an inch in length. This, which is itself a particular 
line, is nevertheless, with regard to its signification, general; since as it is there 
used, it represents all particular lines whatsoever; .... and so the name line. 
which taken absolutely is particular, by being a sign is made general." 

Hume agrees with Berkeley, adopting nearly his language. The only difference 



§ 203. THE NATURE OF THE CONCEPT. 343 

between Hume and Berkeley is, that Berkeley makes the particular idea to repre- 
sent the general, while Hume adds that it becomes general by being annexed to a 
\_erm which is customarily conjoined with many particular ideas, and readily re- 
calls them. In other words, Hume introduces his doctrine of the association of 
ideas to explain how one idea and term can represent several objects, and become 
general. This last doctrine has been expanded and re-applied by later writers. 

Reid, in criticising both Hume and Berkeley, does not give his own views in 
the form of a statement precisely defined. He seems scarcely to know what his 
own opinion is. In resp3ct, however, to the question under consideration as to 
the nature of the concept, he lays down some important distinctions which are 
quite in advance of the doctrines previously admitted. He observes (1) that a 
general idea must be the product of an individual act of the mind, and in that 
sense and so far, is an individual, and not a general, entity. (2.) u Universals can- 
not be the objects of imagination when we take that word in its strict and proper 
sense." " Every man will find in himself * * * that he cannot imagine a 
man without color, or stature, or shape." " I can distinctly conceive universals, 
but I cannot imagine them." (3.) "Ideas are said to have a real existence in the 
m'.nd, at least wh.le we think of them, but universal have no real existence. 
"When we aseribe existence to them, it is not an existence in time or place, but ex- 
istence in some individual subject ,• and this existence means no more, but that 
they are truly attributes of such a subject. Their existence is nothing but predi- 
cability , or the capacity of being attributed to a subject." Essays on the Intellec- 
tual P<;icers. Essay Y.,c. vi. 

Dr. Thomas Brown, (Lectures:^, 47) avows himself to be a conceptual- 
ise and contends that all the nominalists have either in fact admitted or un- 
consciously implied the truth of this doctrine. He distinguishes three 
steps or elements in the generalizing process (1) "the perception or concep- 
tion of two or more objects, (2) the relative feeling of their resemblance in 
certain respects, (3) the designation of these circumstances of resemblance 
by an appropriate name." He criticises some expressions of the conceptual- 
ises as incautious, particularly the us:: of the w >rd idea to express "the feeling 
of resemblance," because this word "seems a'most in itself to imply something 
which can be individualized and offered to the senses." " The same remark may, 
in a great measure, be applied to the use of the word conception, which also seems 
to individuaHze it3 object." "The phrase general notion would have been far 
more appropriate." " Still more unfortunate is a verbal impropriety in the use 
of the indefinite article." " It was not the mere general notion of the nature and 
properties of triangles, but the general idea of a triangle of which writers * * 
have been accustomed to speak." This has exposed the doctrine of general no- 
tions to ridicule, such as Martinus Scriblerus is made to use against Locke. 

Sir "William Hamilton, (Lectures on Metaphysics, Lcc. 35) criticises Brown 
severely for misrepresenting the nominalists, in asserting that they overlook 
the fact that resemblance in individual objects is the ground of applying to them 
universal names. Hamilton then labors earnestly to show that discerned or pre- 
dicated resemblance is individual, and not general ; inasmuch as if likeness 
exists between a pair of objects, it must be an individual relation of likeness. 

In his logic, however, and in all the treatment which he gives to the concept, 
Hamilton proceed? upon the hypothesis of Conceptualism, in the manner in which 
Reid qualifies and explains it. Indeed, it would seem that his pecu'.iar doctrine 






344 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§203. 



of the syllogism and deductive reasoning can have no meaning on the theory of 
Nominalism. And yet he would almost have us believe that he is a Nominalist, 
and ''that the opposing parties are really at one." 

John Stuart Mill, in his Logic, B. i., c. 2, and his Examination of Sir William 
Hamilton's Philosophy, chap. 17, earnestly advocates Nominalism. Names are 
names of things, hut while they denote things, they also connote the attributes of 
things. Thus horse (or chalk) denotes every individual horse (or piece of chalk), 
but at the same time it notes or marks, i. e., connotes all that is peculiar to every 
horse, or to the class horse. Instead of the term concept, or general abstract no- 
tion, Mill would use class name. The mind, whenever it uses the class name in- 
telligently, must have some individual object before it, either perceived or re- 
membered* It need not, however, direct its attention to every part of this indivi- 
dual object. It need think of, i. e., attend to, only thosj parts which the name 
connotes. It need not think of all of these even, but only of those which it has oc- 
casion to use for its immediate purposes. 

Of the modern German philosophers, Kant should be named first, not only in 
the relation of time, but on account of the influence which he has exerted upon 
all subsequent philosophy. Kant distinguished very sharply between individual 
and general objects of knowledge, and in the spirit of this distinction introduced 
many technical terms which are not only still retained in the German systems, but 
have been adopted by English thinkers. Kant's terminology is not only a permanent 
monument of his own activity, but it has served to fix some very important dis- 
tinctions in the minds of speculative men. Kant says very little psychologically 
concerning the nature of the concept as the product and object of the mind's activ- 
ity, or concerning its relation to the objects of sense. Speculatively, however, he 
treats this topic very fully. First of all, the concept, der Begriff, is the product 
and object of the understanding, as the percept die Vorstellung — der Sinnliche 
Gegcnstand, — is the product and object of the action of sense. The image das Bild, 
das Schema, is the work of the fantasy, both reproductive ani productive. The 
percept is individual and so is the image proper. The concept is general and de- 
finite. The Schema is intermediate between the two, being indefinite and mova- 
ble, and in a certain sense general (cf. £ 149). The percept, the image, and the 
Schema are all directly apprehended by the mind. The concept is mediately 
apprehended and mediately applied, requiring, to be used, that it should be 
imaged in an individual object, or applied to some individual. Knowledge by 
concepts is preeminently mediate knowledge. 

In the concept, the matter is distinguished from the form. The matter is fur- 
nished by the senses, the form by the understanding ; before, however, the two 
are brought together, the sense-matter must become a percept in the forms of 
space and time. E.g. The matter of the orange is furnished by all the senses. This 
matter becomes the percept orange by taking certain relations of space. It be- 
comes a concept by being viewed by the understanding as a being with attributes 
which are distinguished from each other, and yet are common to many indivi- 
duals, involving the recognition of diversity, similarity, and production or causa- 
tion. These and other such forms are given by the understanding itself; which, 
in acts of thought, as it were, covers over or invests the matter of the senses with 
any or all of them. It would seem from these doctrines, that Kant was emi- 
nently a conceptualist, inasmuch as he insists so much upon the concept as the 
medium of thought, and so often repeats the assertion that thought is knowledge 



§ 205. NATURE OF THE CONCEPT. 345 

by the medium of concepts. But lie does not declare himself such. His discus- 
sions are all logical and metaphysical rather than psychological. Though a theory 
of the powers and processes of the soul is constantly implied by him, it is rarely 
presented in the j)sychological form. 

§ 204. Kant emphatically gave that ideal direction to philosophy 
which reached its terminus in the extreme doctrine of Hegel, who G. W. F. Hegel 
makes the concept everything and the individual nothing, who 
evolves the real world from the concept, to which he ascribes an infinitude of ele- 
ments and a power of self-development, adequate to produce the countless varieties 
of individual things. Should it be said that this is a misconstruction of his doc- 
trine ; that he treats only of the relation of concepts to one another, and of indi- 
viduals only so far as they are conceived or turned into concepts, the result is the 
same, so far as our position is concerned ; which is that he does not concern him- 
self with the relation of the concept to the individual, nor with the nature of the 
concept as a product of the mind, or as a representative of concrete being, but 
regards it as an all-sufficing and independent entity. Hegel may therefore be 
called a logical realist. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE NATURE OF THE CONCEPT'. — GENERAL NAMES. — LANGUAGE 

The brief review which we have taken of the various theories 
of the concept will enable us to see more clearly and to define 
more exactly its real nature as a mental product, and its re- 
lations to the objects from which it is formed, and to which it 
is applied. Every false or defective theory is founded upon some 
important truth. The consideration of defective or exaggerated 
theories is most useful in enabling us to ascertain the truth in all 
its relations, and thus to develop it completely, as well as to 
distinguish it from errors of excess or defect. In the light of 
our historical sketch, we observe: 

§ 205. 1. The concept, as a mental object or 

•,,.,,,.. . , , „ , Essential char- 

prodUCt, is io be distinguished from the mental act by acteristics of 

which it is originally produced or recalled. Such an 

act is necessarily individual. The concept produced or recalled is 

general. 

2. The concept, as a mental product and a mental object, 

implies that the distinction of individual beings and their attributes. 

Bi accepted as real, and must therefore be admitted as possible. 

15* 



346 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 205. 

3. The attribute must first be known or apprehended as related 
to a thing or being. It is always held by the mind as attributable 
to or predicable of some being or thing. Its import, or what is» 
thought of by the mind, is not the being as such, but the being 
as related, or the being together with a something related to it. 

4. The attribute thus related, is next viewed in the relation 
of similarity to other individual attributes, constituted and 
known like itself. When the individual red is compared with 
other individual reds, there is added to its import its likeness to 
each and all of these. 

5. The use of the concept thus formed to classify objects 
enlarges its meaning still further. The capacity of the concept 
to be a classifier, arises from two circumstances : the fact that 
the attribute which is its germ, is common to more or fewer 
individual beings, and the fact that these attributes are dis- 
tributed in gradation. Whenever it happens that one attribute, 
as red, belongs to more beings than another attribute, as sour ; 
then the red may denote the larger class — i. e., the genus; and 
the sour, the smaller or subordinate class — i. e., the species. Sour, 
in such a case, may be the differentia of the species — the sour- 
reds. If oval were universally present with the species sour-reds, 
it might be a property ; if hirsute were sometimes present and 
sometimes absent, it would be an accident of the same species. 
The application of any attribute in all or any of these class- 
relations, obviously adds to its import. When a concept is 
used to classify, an additional relation is thereby taken up into 
its meaning, and this meaning is thereby so much enlarged. 

We distinguish what may be called generalization — the use 
of the concept as general or as common to more or fewer indi- 
viduals, from generification — the arrangement of these indi- 
viduals into higher and lower classes. Generification simply 
recognizes the fact that these concepts are distributed in gradation, 
some belonging to more and others to fewer individuals, and that 
consequently these are classed according to their extent into genera 
and species. The process and the product in the second case, 
both imply and are built upon the process and product in the 
first. In the first, we bring the individual under the general, by 
the direct act of forming the general from the individual in the 
way described. We know the individual under this concept or 



§ 206. NATURE OF THE CONCEPT. 347 

general name. In the second, we perform the reflex act of 
employing the general to divide all the individuals to which 
it belongs into classes as wider and narrower, or higher or 
lower. 

§ 206. 6. The mind, whenever it uses a general 
term intelligently, must understand or conceive the conceptuaiist 
import which belongs to it in some or all of the are both right, 
particulars which we have enumerated. We do not 
intend that the mind consciously distinguishes and dwells upon 
each of these relations, but that, in forming and applying such 
terms, it must in some sense have recognized them all. The 
question in dispute between the different parties is, what object 
the mind thinks of or has before itself when it uses general 
terms. Our previous analysis has, we think, established that it 
thinks of all these thought-relations, and that they all enter into 
the distinctive import or meaning of the concept as such. The 
conceptuaiist is right, if what he contends for is that the mind 
must impliedly have formed a concept of one or more generalized 
attributes, as often as it employs a general term. If the nomi- 
nalist contends that the concept is only a general name — i. e., a 
name which the mind applies to many objects — he is manifestly 
in the wrong. What the mind considers, is not the name, but 
the meaning or import of the name. 

7. The nominalist is right when he urges that the mind cannot 
conceive or acquire knowledge of the import of any concept, 
except by means of some individual example of the qualities or 
relations which it includes. We cannot know what single 
sensible attributes signify, as red, sweet, smooth, etc., without the 
actual experience of the sensation which each occasions, or of 
one that is analogous. So is it with the concepts of simple acts 
and states of the soul, as to perceive, to imagine, 4 o love, to choose. 
The same is true of the concepts that are clearly complex, as 
house, tent, knife, tree, horse, meadow, mountain, valley, township, 
legislature, authority, wealth, value, rent, wages, feudalism, civiliza- 
tion. Of all these concepts, the elements must first have been 
made intelligible to the mind in some concrete example — i. e , by 
being observed, experienced, or thought, in some individual being 
or agent. 

We cannot know a quality or qualities, a relation or relations, 



348 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§206. 



except as exemplified in some individual being or thing, for the 
reason that these can neither exist nor be known except as belong- 
ing to beings or things. We cannot know what red is, except by 
the inspection of something red ; what imagining or remembering 
are, except as an individual spirit imagines or remembers ; what 
equality, identity, height, or depth are, except as some object is 
known as equal to another or identical with itself, or as high or 
low as compared with another. 

The theory of the nominalist also finds ready acceptance, be- 
cause names are so prominent and efficient in aiding thought. 
Experience teaches that, without the help of names the mind 
makes little progress in forming or applying its concepts. The 
use of language, and of spoken language even, is found to be 
almost essential to successful thought. Without language, the 
discriminations of attributes are few, the generalizations are 
narrow and limited, the power to enter into and receive the 
thoughts of others is almost dormant. 

Many have gone so far as to conclude that, without words — 
i. e., names — we cannot think at all. Experience with deaf- 
mutes, who have acquired little even of the language of signs, 
disproves this extreme conclusion. These show, by their actions, 
that they generalize — i. e., form concepts — to a limited extent. 
They classify and arrange observations, they analyze and com- 
pare attributes, they apply principles in deduction and infer them 
from data. But while these facts show that it is not impossible to 
think without names, they also prove conclusively that without 
such aid, it is impossible to think with much effect. As soon as 
they learn to form and use names by the mastery of signs and 
written language, their power of thought is greatly quickened, 
and their stock of concepts is rapidly increased. But the lan- 
guage of the eye alone, which is the only language at their 
command, is immeasurably below the language of the ear in the 
fineness and variety of its material, as well as in its capacity for 
ready assimilation and recall. Still, the surprising acquisitions 
made by deaf-mutes, in spite of all the disadvantages under 
which they suffer, decisively prove that the mind is not re- 
stricted to any one kind of material out of which to form for 
itself a language; that words, in whatever form, are only the 
signs of thought, and are not essential to thought itself. 



§207. NATURE OF THE CONCEPT. 349 

§ 207. 8. The truth that every concept is capable 
of being referred to an individual thing or image, of concSftf™ 8 
and every individual or image can be thought into a 
concept, reconciles the strife between the conceptualist and the 
nominalist. 

The conceptualist, in insisting that the concept must ignore 
and neglect the individual and its characteristics, often seems to 
overlook the dependence of the concept upon the individual 
thing or image as the originator of its materials, and the ex- 
plainer of its import. Locke says, positively, " the general idea 
of a triangle " " must be neither oblique, nor rectangle, neither 
equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at 
once." " In effect it is ... an idea in which some parts of 
several different and inconsistent ideas are put together." The 
nominalist asserts that the only ideas which we can frame or 
mental objects which we can think of, are individual. Bishop 
Berkeley insists : " The idea of man that I frame to myself must 
be either of a white, or a black or a tawny, a straight or a 
crooked, a tall, or a low or a middle-sized man ; " plainly imply- 
ing that we can form no other thought of man than of one 
possessing these and other individual characteristics. And yet he 
concedes that, "An idea, which, considered in itself, is particular, 
becomes general by being made to represent or stand for all 
other particular ideas of the same sort." But how the indivi- 
dual can represent particular ideas, he does not explain, and 
seems never to have considered. 

This remark brings the point in dispute to a distinct issue, in 
the questions, " How can one individual represent other indivi- 
duals ? Or, How can the individual explain and illustrate the 
general ? A concept is general, an image is individual, how can 
you think the one into the other ?" The sides of every indivi- 
dual triangle must have a definite length, and the angles a de- 
finite measurement and relations. Every individual man has in 
like manner a definite height, form, color, etc. We think these 
into concepts, not by overlooking the individual relations of 
each, but by considering their likeness to similar attributes in 
other objects ; the sides and angles, not in their individual re- 
lations, but simply as sides and angles — i. e., as bounding a 
figure and as being contained within two lines. We do not so 



350 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§20& 



much leave any thing out of view, as we add the new relations of 
likeness which the formation of the concept involves. An object 
viewed without thought-relations, is an image. An image with 
these relations added, becomes a concept. It is true that, when we 
think the image into a concept, we give special attention to fewer 
elements ; but we need not overlook or on^it any in regarding 
these few. Least of all do we introduce into the concept elements 
that are inconsistent or incompatible, and conceive — i. e., image — a 
triangle which is neither rectangular, acute, or obtuse, as Locke 
asserts is necessary and as Berkeley objects is impossible. 

It is curious and instructive to notice here, that 

Different ima- . ,, •, . , , , 

ges illustrate every man images the concepts which he employs or 
cept. " hears of, by examples that are peculiar to himself, 

and which are derived from his individual experience 
or observation. If his experience or education is marked by 
very striking peculiarities, the concrete examples suggested to him 
by every concept and name will be as peculiar. An Esquimaux, 
a Chinese, and a European, would picture very different objects 
to the imagination, on hearing or reading the words state, legisla- 
tion, wealth, money, wages, civilization, fashion ; and even the more 
concrete terms, house, city, ship, oar, sail, knife, feast, procession, 
township, and meadow. And yet their concepts denoted by these 
words are substantially the same, inasmuch as the more important 
and essential relations of objects are common, however greatly 
their individual characteristics may differ. 

This circumstance explains how there may be a community 
of thoughts, with a very diverse experience. The nature of 
things and the nature of man remains unchanged. The same 
powers, laws, and ends are perpetually reappearing, the same 
principles are continually illustrated, under forms the most un- 
like, i 
_ § 208. 9. The realist emphasises the truth that 

The truth rep- r 

resented by re- every real concept should suggest or express some 
one or more of the essential properties and unchanging 
laws of individual beings. He is not content with the view of 
the nominalist, who makes the general term a mere class-name for 
the simple convenience of language, nor with the view of the 
conceptualist, who regards the concept as a chance-assemblage 
of attributes. He insists that concepts proper ought to signify and 



§ 208. NATURE OF THE CONCEPT. 351 

represent those objects and those attributes only which are per- 
manent and constantly occurring. This is the truth that has 
given currency and influence to the realistic theory, in spite of" 
the extravagant and metaphorical language, and the insuffi- 
cient arguments by which it has been stated and enforced. 

All individual objects of nature exist under constant con- 
ditions, and are produced by permanent forces, according to 
fixed laws and ends. These constituents, conditions, causes, laws, 
and ends of individual objects are often called their inner truth, 
their essential nature, their true meaning, their real and permanent 
being. The individual mass of earth or ore, the single crystal, 
leaf, herb, tree, fish, bird, reptile, quadruped, and man, have 
accidental relations of position, form, size, color, or taste ; they 
exist here or there for a longer or shorter period of time, but 
these relations are of little importance for the higher ends 
of knowledge and of practice. It is to reach and to impart the 
knowledge of permanent elements, causes, laws, and designs, that 
concepts are formed, classes are arranged, and names are given. 
As we have seen already, many of the earliest classifications and 
concepts are rude and unsatisfactory for scientific purposes, 
because they are founded upon attributes that are superficial and 
narrow in their significance and indicate few or none of the per- 
manent elements and laws of being. These are gradually out- 
grown and displaced by others which as soon as discovered sug- 
gest more comprehensive agencies and laws. 

No better illustration can be adduced of the differ- 
ing import of different kinds of concepts and classes, tions of bo- 
than is furnished by the history of botany. Linnaeus 
hit upon the convenient expedient of classing the different in- 
dividual plants by the number of the stamina that appear in 
their flowers and of subdividing the classes into orders by the 
number of pistils. The device was convenient, because all 
plants have flowers, and the number of the stamens and pistils is 
in most cases constant, and presents a ready means for their 
division and subdivision into classes and sub-classes. To a cer- 
tain extent this division signified something — so far at least as 
the number of stamens and pistils was found to indicate other 
common characteristics of importance, and seemed to point to 
deeper qualities and laws. But this was by no means universally 



352 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§208. 



the case. The classes and orders that were founded upon the 
number of these organs, were concepts of little interest, because 
they signified nothing in respect to the structure or the germina- 
tion, the growth or the habits, the flower or the fruit. Hence 
the Linnean system was abandoned for a system of classes and of 
nomenclature, which was founded on indications of greater prac- 
tical and scientific significance. 

The mistakes of the realists have been twofold. They have, both 
in language and thought, confounded the subjective concept, 
which is a purely psychological product, with its objective cor- 
relate — the related elements which it represents or indicates ; 
and have often called both by the same name, and invested them 
with the same properties. They have used a highly metaphoric 
terminology to express the nature of universals, and their rela- 
tions to individual beings. The ideas of Plato and the Pla- 
tonists, present from eternity in the Divine mind ; the forms of 
the Aristotelians, incapable of existing apart from matter, yet 
essential to every material thing and species ; the substantial and 
essential forms of the schoolmen, as well as their universals antb 
rem and a parte rei ; the forms and ideas of Kant ; the notion 
of Hegel, — self-moving from the empty yet posited nothing, and 
self-developed by constant growth into all the fulness of the idea, 
with a capacity claimed for this notion to pass into the objective, 
giving the world of material being, aud then to return to itself 
so as by self-conscious affirmation and distinction to blossom into 
spirit and thus complete the circle of absolute knowledge ; — all 
these are examples of the exaggerations and personifications of 
realism in its endeavors to express a most important truth. 

This subject has, of late, assumed a very great interest and 
importance among naturalists, in connection with the question of 
the permanence of species in the natural and vegetable kingdoms. 
Certain naturalists contend that none of the so-called species are 
permanent, either in the plan of nature, or its actual divisions ; 
that every one of them has been developed by evolution from 
previously existing types, which owed their form and apparent 
permanence to certain conditions or laws that were but temporary 
in their action and transitory in their results. In this way Dar- 
win, {Origin of Species, etc.,) Huxley, and others, reason from 
certain varieties produced within species, that all species existing 



§209. NATURE OF THE CONCEPT. • 353 

at present, have been themselves developed. Herbert Spencer, 
by a broader application of the same general assumption, makes 
every type of existence, both material and spiritual, to have been 
developed from lower forms, which are held in being till forms 
still higher and more exalted shall displace them. On the other 
hand, Owen, Agassiz, and Dana find that the classifications of 
science must assume a more permanent and firmer foundation for 
the species which they accept, in the action of permanent forces 
after the fixed types that are contemplated in the unchanging 
plan and the manifested thoughts of God. In this assumption 
they express the scientific truth of the bold metaphors of Plato, 
who taught that by definition and division, we find in the tem- 
porary and phenomenal those eternal and real ideas which exist in 
unsoiled and unalloyed purity in the mind of the Deity alone. 
(Cf. Agassiz, Essay on Classification.) 

§ 209. 10. The reasons why language aids our 

3 -i, Value of nam 

thinking are the following. iDgand of ian 

(a.) The name is both a sensuous and an individual 
object. It presents to our sense-perceptions a definite object, which 
we can readily evoke, distinctly apprehend, and easily and unmis- 
takably repeat. What it represents, is indeed abstract and general, 
but the name itself is an individual object of sense-perception. 

The word addresses a single sense, the ear or the eye singly, or 
the two combined. In either case it is ready to appear when 
called for. The winged word flies to our aid, and the ghostly 
product of thought is at once embodied before the senses. 

(b.) The word is the sign, not of the whole of the individual 
thing or being which might image or exemplify the concept, bat 
of a portion of its attributes or relations. In consequence, words 
present a greater variety and refinement of objects than exist in 
the world of nature. The words red fruit, acid-fruit, currant, 
cherry-currant, may all be imaged or exemplified by the same 
sense-object, viz., the fruit before us. Red stands for a single one 
of its properties ; fruit, and hence red fruit, for several ; cur- 
rant, for more ; and cherry-currant, for even more. So the terms 
company, organized company, and legislature, may all be 
exemplified by the same body of individuals discerned by the 
sense*, while each of the words represents more or fewer of it? 
attributes or relations. 



354 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§210. 



To fix and represent a single attribute by a word, is also neces- 
sary for the service of communication which language performs. 
Another mind could not be brought to direct its attention to the 
attribute and property which we with difficulty discern, unless 
the attribute were represented by a name. This, however, does 
not weaken, but rather confirms the service of the word to thought, 
in rendering its acquisitions permanent and ready for use. 

(c.) Names enable us to add to our stock of logically depend- 
ent concepts. One concept is dependent upon and grows out of 
another. One concept, when formed, enables us to form another 
and is often the essential condition of the existence of the second. 

(J.) Names aid most efficiently in rapid thinking, by sparing 
us the necessity of dwelling on the entire import of the word be- 
fore us. In conversation or rapid discourse, as well as in reading 
by the eye, only enough of this import is attended to to satisfy 
the present occasion — all else is omitted. Even whole sentences, 
when they are familiar, are received as the signs of single con- 
cepts or relations, viz. : those which the present occasion requires. 

This can only happen when the language is familiar to the eye 
and the ear, so that, as the eye and the ear each catch enough to 
identify the word or phrase, the mind also catches enough of the 
import to satisfy the present occasion. Were not the words 
addressed to the senses, and capable of rapid formation and re- 
ception, they could not serve in this rapid application. 

§ 210. 11. The analysis which has been given of 
The relation of t ^ e na t U re of the concept and its relations to the in- 

symbohc to in- * 

tuitive know- dividual object or image, explains more exactly the 

relation of what is called symbolic, mediate, or logical 

knowledge, to that which is intuitive, immediate, and experimental. 

We have already spoken of this distinction in a general way. 
We return to it again, for the sake of greater exactness. Know- 
ledge by concepts is symbolic, mediate and logical. Knowledge 
by direct apprehension, whether in connection with consciousness 
or perception, is called intuitive. 

When I perceive a sense-object, as a man, a house, or tree, or 
am conscious of an individual state of spiritual activity, or dis- 
cern with the mind's eye a mathematical figure, I know intui- 
tively each of these objects. When I recognize either as belong- 
ing to a class, or give to either a name, I am said to know it by 



§ 210. NATURE OF THE CONCEPT. 355 

means of the concept or name ; and these concepts or names are 
said to be the media or symbols, which I employ in knowing. This 
distinction, as thus stated, originated with Leibnitz, and much 
has been made of it by later thinkers, as Kant and other Ger- 
man philosophers, as also by Hamilton, Mansel, and Morell 
fimong the English. 

The grounds for this distinction have been explained already in 
the positions, that every concept supposes an individual concrete, 
either real or imaginary, in which it is exemplified, and no person 
can conceive the import of the concept except as he resorts to 
this concrete for interpretation and explanation. When I pro- 
nounce such words as white, red, sweet, sour, etc., I presuppose 
that the person to whom I address them has known by expe- 
rience, i. e., by intuition, what they signify ; that he has either 
seen these colors and tasted these tastes, or those which are in some 
respects like them. If he has had no intuitive or analogous ex- 
perience of them, my words convey to him no meaning. The 
same is true of all the so-called simple ideas of Locke, which are 
the constituent elements of all those which are complex. 

It should be remembered, however, that language may be used 
either for philosophical thought on the one hand, or pictorial and 
emotional effect on the other. In the one case, the mind is occu- 
pied with the more abstract and general relations of objects. In 
the other, those which are broader and more obvious are em- 
ployed, often solely for the excitement and gratification of the 
emotions. In both cases, use must be made of the objects and 
images of individual experience. But in the first, the relations 
concerned are less dependent upon the individual images which 
happen to be suggested, because to convey or awaken general 
relations is the chief end. The individual examples by which 
each individual hearer or reader verifies or illustrates these con- 
cepts and their relations, is of less importance, provided he under- 
stands their import. 

But even here intuition is far better than symbolic knowledge-, 
rather should it be said, intuition with thought is far better than 
symbolic knowledge without intuition. The most careful defini- 
tion of a mountain, the ocean-surf, a cataract, a giraffe, a palm-tree, 
may convey impressions far less satisfactory, and far less accu- 
rate, than the inspection of a moment might furnish, provided 



356 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§210. 



the inspection leads to thought — i. e., to the formation or verifi- 
cation of concepts. With the concrete before us, our concepts 
are more exact, because we see for ourselves. The concrete also 
furnishes the material for any new concepts which we ourselves 
may form directly from their objects. 

The defects of mere words and of the images which they awaken 
in comparison with actual intuition are still more striking when 
the objects are described rather than defined, and for the purposes 
of vivid impression and excited feeling. One is forcibly im- 
pressed with these defects, when he reads a description of a scene 
in nature with which he is personally familiar ; especially if he 
reads it with the scene actually before him. However graphic 
or complete the description may be, it is but a lifeless outline 
when compared with the fulness and vividness of the reality, or 
with the throng of images which are awakened in the memory. 
The impressions received from words by one who has never wit- 
nessed the reality, are but as thin and pallid shadows, when con- 
trasted with full and glowing intuitions. The most exact descrip- 
tion of the falls of Niagara is a very different thing to one 
who has recently seen the cataract, or who reads with his eye 
open upon the scene, from what it can be to one who has never 
seen its wonders. If a person has never seen any waterfall, it is 
still more impotent to instruct the mind. 

These facts bring to light very distinctly the truth that lan- 
guage operates to a very great extent by suggesting the images 
and remembrances which have been gained by the experience 
and observation of each individual person. Besides the direct 
office of instructing the mind, it serves to awaken a multitude of 
kindred images and facts which are suggested by them. Words 
which to one are dead and meaningless are to another full of 
life and import. Words meant only in kindness may awaken 
images of sorrow and pain. The reader of poetry must have 
somewhat of a poet's power to receive and re-create. The stu- 
dent of philosophy must have something of a philosopher's 
reach and insight, to understand and judge what he reads. 

There is a large class of facts and truths, as well of scenes and 
events, to which language can do but scant justice. These are 
those to which the facts and events which we know and have 
experienced are only remotely analogous. Language is feeble 



§ 210. NATURE OF THE CONCEPT. 357 

to convey to the inhabitant of a plain or a prairie, the impressions 
of mountain scenery ; to the stranger to woods, the grandeur of 
an aboriginal forest ; to one who has always lived inland, the 
glory and the beauty of the ocean. 

When the means of finding analogies are still more scanty, 
the communication by language is still less successful. How 
curiously do we endeavor to anticipate what may be the scenes 
and objects to which another life may introduce us ! But how 
feeble is our power to imagine these, because our stock of analoga 
is so scanty ! We desire most earnestly that description in lan- 
guage may convey to us the desired information. But language 
may be to a large extent inadequate, because all the images of 
which language can avail itself must of necessity be taken from 
the scenes of the present state of being. 

It is sometimes asserted that the Infinite Spirit can have no common relations 
with the finite, — that all our conceptions of the infinite, being finite, must there- 
fore be inadequate and unworthy; and that, consequently, all attempts of language 
to convey knowledge from the higher to the lower must be forever impossible, 
because the media — f. e., the images and concepts — must both be finite. This 
is urged against the possibility of any communication from God through the 
forms of finite nature, or by the media of human speech. It may be granted 
that,to the mind, in its studies of nature, the images that are suggested or pre- 
sented, and the language founded on such images,are wholly inadequate to express 
the divine, because they are finite; it maybe granted even that the concepts 
of spiritual relations must necessarily be interpreted and illustrated by images 
taken from finite objects, and that so far there are essential defects in all our imagi- 
nations concerning God: yet it may remain true that there are relations of simi- 
larity and analogy between the finite and the infinite spirit, which render it pos- 
sible that the one should be understood by the other, and that the language which 
describes the one to the other should convey actual truth. 

The infinitude of God may not exclude personality, which itself establishes a 
likeness between man and God. Personality may involve similarity of know- 
ledge in respect to all the higher relations of truth. A common sympathy may 
rest upon a similarity of emotional capacities, while similarity in the still higher 
endowment of a personal will, may render possible a similar moral goodness. 
These likenesses or analogies, may coexist with the greatest disparities in every 
other respect. The one being may be infinite and the Creator; the other may bo 
finite and created ; and yet the One, by indications through his works and com- 
munications by his word, may make himself truly, if not perfectly,known. The 
imagination of the finite may be inadequate to picture the infinite, and yet the 
thinking of the finite may apprehend the relations by which the infinite first 
thinks and therefore creates, and in creating manifests himself to the created. 



358 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§211. 



CHAPTER V. 



JUDGMENT, AND THE PROPOSITION. 

§ 211. The processes already considered, and which 
impiSdhfthe are involved in forming and applying notions, are 
uTe^fthecoa^ alike in this; they are all acts of judgment. The 
cept ' mind cannot know, — much less can it think, without 

judging. To think, is to judge. Even in forming or evolving 
its notions — that is, in providing itself with the materials for what 
arc usually called acts of judgment — the mind must judge. 

The truth of this assertion is evident from the following con- 
siderations. 

(1.) It is evident from an analysis of the act itself. If we 
retrace the steps which we have taken in forming concepts, 
we find that we cannot know attributes, except as we affirm 
them of individual beings. An attribute without a being 
is inconceivable in thought and impossible in fact. Sup- 
pose we meet with a series of unknown and unnamed objects, 
each of which has some attribute or property, that is unfamiliar 
and even without a name : or suppose the attribute to be 
familiar and nameable, while the objects are unnamed. We 
think and say of each of these objects, it is yellow, red, or green. 
In thinking or saying thus we in fact perform a process which can 
only be represented by some proposition, one element of which is 
affirmed of another : e. g. f x. is yellow, red, or green ; or if each is 
as yet unnamed, # [individual] is y [general]. The nearest and 
best expression of this act which we find in any form of language 
is the impersonal verb, as, it shines, it lightens, it rains, in the use 
of which the unnamed being is present to the senses, and the at- 
tribute is judged or affirmed of it. 

(2.) It is still further implied in the truth already developed, 
that every notion is by its very nature and essence relative, i. e., 
related to individual objects or actually existing things. 

(3.) The same is evident from the consideration of the meaning 
of names, or notions in language. A name is the verbal symbol of 
a concept or notion. But to be a name, it must be a name of some 
object or objects ; some object must be called by it ; it must be 
applied to some thing or being. But these acts imply judgment. 



§ 212. JUDGMENT, AND THE PROPOSITION. 359 

(4.) It is implied by the nature and definition of knowledge. 
An act of knowledge has already been shown to be necessarily 
and universally an act of judgment, whether it takes the form of 
presentation, representation, or thought. Every such act implies 
the apprehension of an object as existing ; and more, its existence 
in some relation. If it is true that knowledge by perception and 
memory implies judgment, much more does knowledge by thought; 
forasmuch as the general with which thought has to do, can by its 
very essence and nature, be only a relative and a predicable entity. 

We conclude then that wherever there is a notion, there is an 
implied act of judgment. Every such notion has been formed 
by judgment, and is capable of being expanded into a judgment. 
It is an organic thing, representing in its very essence the act 
which gave it being, and capable of being developed into similar 
though more complex products. It is like a seed, which is a 
miniature plant, having come from a plant and being ready to 
spring into a plant ; or it is like the cell which is the organized 
and organizing element of development in vegetable or animal life. 
We do not judge by a mechanical and superinduced act of the 
intellect, which, finding two names or notions, proceeds to fasten 
them together ; but it is of the very nature of the notion, that it 
can be applied or united to some object. This natural and neces- 
sary act of union or synthesis is an act of judgment. The true 
doctrine may be stated thus : every concept is a contracted judg- 
ment ; every judgment is an expanded concept 

§ 212. The judgments by which concepts are Jud entgare 
formed, are called primary, and psychological judg- J^jj, 01 -^ * 1 
ments. They are distinguished by the circumstance 
that their subject is an existing and individual tiling. Judg- 
ments in which concepts are affirmed or denied of one another 
are secondary and logical. The secondary, comparative, and 
logical judgments are all founded on those which are primary, 
natural, and psychological. To be convinced of this truth, we 
need only to consider the expression of judgments in language, 
and to trace the order of progress by which logical judgments, 
i.e., judgments consisting of concepts, come to be reached and un- 
derstood. 

The secondary judgment, when its subject is an individual be- 
ing, differs from the primary in this, that the subject is denoted 



860 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§212. 



by means of a common term. Instead of saying it, we say this 
orange. If the subject is a universal, as all oranges, the mind 
gives the result of its observations or inductions, by using the 
concept in its largest extent. 

When purely mental entities are treated of, whether a fiction 
of the imagination, as the centaur, or a mathematical construction, 
as the triangle, or an abstractum, as virtue, they are treated as 
actually existing beings. 

How the sub- ^ e ^ act ^as a l rea( ty been established, that the 
ment° f S JU ex- conce pt.- by i ts vei T nature, contemplates attributes 
pressed in lan- or Q v . anc [ fa^ concepts, like man, human, humanity, 
so far as their constituent attributes are concerned, 
stand for precisely the same content of attributes. When they 
are expressed in language, however, man and human differ in 
this, that the one word, man, denotes a being to which these at- 
tributes belong, and the other, human, denotes the attributes 
only. By what process the mind comes to be possessed of these 
two sorts of words, we need not here inquire. But when it does 
possess them, it cannot but use them. Instead of thinking or 
saying, it is yellow, or, it rains, the man says, orange is yellow, 
cloud rains. Soon he learns to say this in three ways ; this orange 
is yellow, some oranges are yellow, all oranges are yellow, accord- 
ing as he uses the general name for one, a part, or all of the 
beings for which the orange stands. In order to do this, he ap- 
plies special terms to denote these three relations, viz., the words 
the, this, or one ; some [a few or many] ; and all. 

The fact that a concept has the two relations of extent and con- 
tent, fits it to be used both as the name of one or more indivi- 
duals, and as an attribute only. When a concept is used to de- 
note beings, it is used in the relation of extent. When it is used 
to denote attributes, it is used in the relation of content. In the 
secondary judgment, a concept used in its extent only is employed 
as the subject, taking the place of the individual intuition ; the 
notion as content is retained as the predicate : and the natural 
judgment in which only one notion is used, becomes a secondary 
judgment in which two notions appear. The two species of 
judgment are, however, essentially one and the same, inasmuch 
as both express what is essentially involved in the act of thinking, 
viz. • the act of affirming a concept of an existing being or thing. 



§ 214. JUDGMENT, AND THE PEOPOSITION. 361 

§ 213. The copula expresses the act of judging or significaf 

tion c " 
pula. 



affirming, whatever is the kind of judgment or the rela- * 



tion affirmed. It makes no difference whether it is or 
is not expressed, it is still present as an element in every judg- 
ment. The act of judgment is the same whatever be its verbal 
expression, whether subject, predicate and copula are condensed 
in a single word, as, plait — or expanded into two, as, it rains — or 
into three, as, the clouds are raining. 

The copula does not require or imply that there should be an actually existing 
material or spiritual thing or agent, of which the attribute is affirmed or thought. 
The being may be an imaginary being, as a centaur, or a mathematical entity, as 
a triangle, or an abstractum,as whiteness, or virtue, or legislation ; and yet one or 
more attributes may be asserted or thought of each. All that the copula pro- 
perly signifies is, that the concept has this or that attribute, one or many. 
Whether the concept is of a real being or a thought-being is left to be deter- 
mined by other sources of knowledge. If a centaur is spoken of, we know it has 
only imaginary existence ; if a triangle, that it is a mathematical conception or 
construction; if virtue or legislation, we know we must go back to concrete 
beings, to find the realities of which these are abstracts. 

- § 214. It has been established that every notion is classegofjudg . 
a contracted judgment and every judgment is an JJJJg" of J col- 
expanded notion, and also that every notion has two tent - 
relations — the relation of content and the relation of extent. It 
follows that notions can be expanded into two kinds of judg- 
ments : judgments of content and judgments of extent. Each of 
these forms of judgment require special illustration. 

We begin with the Judgment of Content. This is the form of 
all original and natural judgments. It is by a judgment of con- 
tent, i. e., of a common attribute or relation — that every notion is 
originally formed. In this form judgments most frequently occur 
in language. Objects are observed and their common attribute 
or attributes are thought,!, e., judged, of them, and the judgments 
when expressed in words are those propositions which abound 
in every language. It is only by a reflex act that the mind de- 
velops and employs judgments of extent. 

These natural judgments of content, serve the purposes of 
common life and of common intercourse. For the ends and uses 
of science we need to go further and to employ propositions of 
definition. In such propositions we assert not merely one or more 
attributes for information, but we indicate for distinction, the 
16 



362 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§214 






attributes which make up or constitute the entire content. To 
satisfy the ends of science we must express what is called the whole 
content, since if we state only those elements which are common 
to this concept and many others, and omit one or more that i3 
peculiar, we do not distinguish it from others. If we define a cir- 
cle as a curvilinear figure, the circle is not distinguished from an 
ellipse. If we define man to be a two-legged and featherless 
being, this is true also of a plucked chicken. Hence the rule by 
which we try and determine a good definition : The proposition 
which expresses it must be convertible. 

The content was called by Aristotle and the Scholastics the 
essence, i. e., the attributes or elements which make the notion to 
be what it is as a notion. 

Aristotle, however, also recognized in the essence that which 
existed really and permanently in the objects to which the concept 
belonged, rather than the attributes themselves which constitute 
the concept. He applied essence metaphysically rather than logi- 
cally, to the objective correlate of the concept, rather than to the 
concept itself as an intellectual or purely subjective product. 

A proposition of content properly expresses only logical truth. 
It very often implies, however, real existence. Propositions may 
concern existing beings or notions of beings to which there is no 
corresponding reality. The proposition as a definition only, ex- 
pands the content or essence of the concept, without deciding 
whether any corresponding reality exists in fact. When for 
example we define the centaur we give the attributes that make 
up the conception without asserting or even knowing whether such 
a being exists. When we define a triangle we state the essential 
constituents of the concept produced by the constructive imagi> 
nation, knowing that it has no other existence. When we define 
man we both define the concept and believe the concept is realized 
in actual fact. The definition of centaur implies only thought- 
essence or logical truth. The definition of man implies both 
logical and real truth. The copula is, in the one case signifies 
is defined as or consists of; in the other — is defined as and really 
exists. 

In very many cases we readily interpret the meaning of the 
copula and the character of the judgment and definition, by our 
knowledge of the subject-matter. In other cases we have m 



§ 215. JUDGMENT, AND THE PROPOSITION. 363 

such knowledge as qualifies us to determine whether the defi- 
nition is really true, as well as logically consistent. Suppose 
any one of the following concepts is to be defined : virtue, duty, in- 
alienable right, natural liberty, tyranny, a sovereign state. It is 
of essential importance to know whether the definition concerns 
only the concept as a mental product, existing in and for the 
mind only, or whether there are actual relations and activities of 
human nature, to which the concept corresponds. In the first 
instance we should need to consider only, whether the concept is 
correctly defined as the term is ordinarily used, or as this or that 
school of philosophers or politicians have conceived it. In the 
second, we should inquire, whether it answers to a truth of fact, 
i. e., whether the concept has a corresponding reality. 

Scientific truth implies both logical and real truth. Logical 
truth is but another name for logical consistency. A dexterous 
logician, if suffered to frame his own concepts and construct his 
own propositions, may easily frame a system which shall have 
sufficient truth to give plausibility to all that is defective by 
omission, or false by positive error. Every definition should 
therefore be scrutinized both as to its consistency and its truth. 
It should always be remembered that a proposition may be logi- 
cally true and yet really false, while science requires that the 
definition should not only be logically consistent and logically 
complete, but also really exhaustive and actually true. 

§ 215. The proposition of extent is the natural S t d e ^ entsof 
consequent of the proposition of content. The pro- 
position of content is first in time, because the knowledge of the 
individual goes before the knowledge of the general. As soon, 
however, as a single attribute is affirmed as common to many 
individuals, then this common attribute can be employed as 
itself dividing or separating these individuals into a class by 
themselves. As soon as we think, This house is white, it is pos- 
sible for us to refer the house to the class of white objects. But 
because every generalized attribute may classify the objects to 
which it belongs, it does not follow that the mind recognizes it 
in this relation, or expresses the relation in language. It is not 
till the adjective, white, becomes a noun, that we use it as a 
classifier, and think or say, whites, i. e., white men, are English^ 
French, etc., etc., or white things are so and so. It is not till we 



364 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§215. 



turn back upon our thinking, and recognize the fact that these 
attributes divide into classes the beings to which thej belong, and 
even go further and notice that some classes of objects are wider 
and some narrower than others, that we have occasion to think 
of these notions in their extent, or to expand them into proposi- 
tions expressing this relation. 

Propositions of extent like those of content, strictly considered, 
only assert logical truth — i. e., the subordinate classes into which 
the concept is divided. But they often imply the real existence 
of the objects to which both the comprehending genus and the 
included species belong. 

Propositions of extent, whether used in common life or for the 
purposes of science, are clearly distinguishable from propositions 
of content. It is, however, easy to confound the one with the 
other ; and easy to interchange the one with the other. Indeed 
we are often tempted to translate the propositions which express 
the one into those which express the other. We cannot say that 
man is an animal without implying that he possesses those attri- 
butes which are involved in the concept and the term animal. 
Whenever we assert that man is a species of which animal is a 
genus, we must ascribe to man certain attributes. Conversely, 
we cannot assert certain attributes of man without placing him 
in a distinct class. These facts are not at all inconsistent with 
the truth that at some times we use propositions with sole refer- 
ence to their content, and at other times with exclusive respect to 
their extent. Indeed, the use of propositions of extent is a neces- 
sary condition and consequence of logical division. But if division 
is distinguishable from definition, then are propositions of extent 
clearly distinguishable from propositions of content. 

As definition gives complete propositions of content, so division 
gives exact and complete propositions of extent. Both pro- 
cesses are involved in the beginnings of thinking. They are 
only carried forward to their completed perfection when we reach 
the precise and comprehensive knowledge which science attains. 
Both are the necessary conditions of the formation and use of 
general terms, and are the constant accompaniments of language. 
Both are perfect in their ideal aims whenever the definitions in 
any branch of knowledge become precise and true, and the 
divisions orderly and exhaustive. 



§ 216. JUDGMENT, AND THE PROPOSITION. 365 

§ 216. It is a superficial view to regard scientific Scientific and 

. comniou know- 

knowledge as different in kind from common know- ledge, 
ledge : to reason as though the man of science has developed in- 
tellectual powers which are peculiar to himself, or has discovered 
special processes or rules having no relation to those which 
are natural to all men. The powers employed b} T the true phi- 
losopher and the uncultured are the same. The common man 
thinks as really, and in his way as effectively and as sagaciously, 
as does the philosopher. 

Often it is not easy to find the dividing line which separates 
common from scientific knowledge. We cannot say, in the 
history of any branch of knowledge, Here common knowledge 
ceases and science begins : At this point he who knows as a man, 
begins to know as a philosopher. Of some sciences it is true, 
that at a certain period of their development, common terms are 
exchanged for those which are technical, and a scholastic, some- 
times a repulsive nomenclature takes the place of words which 
are familiar from use and warm with grateful associations. Even 
objects that in the earliest classifications had been grouped 
together by affinities so close that they seem to have a necessary 
and unbroken relationship, are strangely separated, and find them- 
selves suddenly in a new and unpleasant society. Plants and 
trees apparently the most alike are thrown into the most distant 
groups, and those which are apparently the most diverse and 
dissimilar are inexplicably brought together. In those sciences 
which are less technical in their definitions and classifications, 
the lines of transition and division are not even suspected. We 
cannot find the place where science in its technical form begins, 
and formally takes its leave of common knowledge. In Psycho- 
logy, Ethics, Politics, Law and Theology, common terms are in a 
great measure still retained ; they are only employed with a more 
careful definition and a more exact application. 

Science when viewed in the light of our analysis, is simply 
"knowledge by concepts carefully defined in order to a complete divi- 
sion and a methodized arrangement of the things or objects to which 
iJiese concepts are applicable. In forming scientific notions, the 
mind discovers relations and attributes which it had never ob- 
served before. In looking more patiently, it observes more 
closely. As it proceeds to use and apply the notions already 



366 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§217. 



attained, in the processes of deduction and induction which are 
yet to be explained, it discerns still other relations of likeness 
and unlikeness. As it proceeds in its triumphant course it stili 
continues to define and divide. Science began when it formed 
the first proposition of content. This involved a proposition of 
extent. It will have finished its course and completed the circle 
of its possible triumphs, when it shall have exhausted all that is 
knowable by these two processes, each involving the other-^ 
when it shall have arranged in systematic order, everything which 
can be known, by complete and subordinated divisions as the resuli 
of true and exhaustive definitions. 



CHAPTER VI. 



REASONING. — DEDUCTION OR MEDIATE JUDGMENT. 



Nature and im- § ^17. The process of thought or mode of think- 
portanceofrea- j n g wn i cn we are naturally led to consider next in 
order is reasoning. That to reason is a function of 
the thinking power, will be questioned by none. By many it is 
esteemed its special and almost its sole function, a function which 
absorbs all the rest into itself. Many make the capacity to reason 
to be the exclusive and distinctive endowment of man, striving to 
account for all the other thought-processes by resolving them into 
this. 

Reasoning, also, like every other act or mode of know- 
ing, is itself an act of judgment. It is distinguished from judg- 
ment proper by being mediate and indirect ; whereas judgments 
proper are immediate and direct. 

The acts of judgment proper have already been explained as 
acts in which a general notion is thought or affirmed of an in- 
dividual being, or a concept, by direct inspection and comparison. 
When, for example, we judge of ten apples, that they are red, 
or oval, or round, or of equal or unequal weight, or of similar 
taste or odor, we perform acts of direct or immediate judgment. 
But when we reason concerning them, that because they are red, 



§ 218. REASONING. — DEDUCTION OR MEDIATE JUDGMENT. 367 

or similar in odor, therefore they taste alike, we judge indirectly 
or mediately ; we consider, not only the apples themselves, but 
the relation of one of their properties to another. This truth is 
implied in the remark that in judgment we compare two notions, 
and discern or pronounce that the notions agree or disagree; 
whereas in reasoning we compare two judgments, and declare or 
discern that the judgments agree or disagree. If we distinguish 
the process of reasoning from the product or result — as in the 
other acts of the intellect — we should call the first reasoning and 
the second an argument. The latter is exclusively limited to 
deduction. 

§ 218. The process called reasoning is two-fold, in- 
ductive and deductive. It is known by the two names, ductjve and de- 
induction and deduction. These two are sufficiently 
distinguished by the following definitions : In deduction the mind 
begins with general propositions, and reasons to those which are 
particular or individual ; in induction, it reasons from individual 
or particular to general judgments. 

In deduction we assume or imply that the mind is already fur- 
nished with judgments or beliefs that are more or less general, 
and proceed to derive from them, those which are particular or 
singular. In other words, we apply the predicate of a general 
proposition to a particular or individual, to which we had never 
applied it before. For example : ' we ought in every act to con- 
suit the wishes of our parents ; therefore we ought to do this in 
choosing our business in life.' In induction, on the contrary, we 
proceed from singular or particular to general propositions or 
truths. We observe that one or several pieces of iron-ore, with 
certain characteristics, are magnetic. "We infer that every similar 
piece of iron-ore is magnetic. 

Both these processes are called processes of reasoning. The 
means employed, i. e., th© grounds or foundations of each, 
whether they are general or particular propositions or individual 
facts, are called reasons, sometimes data. But to reason par emi- 
nence, is to perform the process of deduction; and reasons or 
grounds of belief are preeminently those general principles or 
truths from which we derive or deduce particular conclusions. 
Hence, when we use the words to reason and a reason, we are 
usually understood to have in mind the deductive process. On the 



368 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§219. 



other hand, we say freely that we reason by induction or induc- 
tively ; and no phrases are more common than inductive reasoning 
and reasoning by induction. 

These two processes are usually combined together in every 
case in which our knowledge is enlarged by what we call reason- 
ing. When we use examples of reasoning for the purpose of 
illustrating the nature of the process, we seem to be able to sepa- 
rate deduction from induction. But whenever we reason with 
the express design of adding to our knowledge, or of increasing 
our confidence in that which we already possess, both processes 
are called into requisition. If, for example, we should reason de- 
ductively, to prove to a person who did not already believe it, 
that a particular act of obedience, or perhaps of resistance, to the 
government, was obligatory ; we should use the process of induc- 
tion to prove that such an act was distinguished by the character- 
istics or criteria which showed it to come under the duties of a 
loyal citizen. 

In many cases of induction, also, the process of deduction is 
brought into requisition. We can scarcely suppose that Frank- 
lin established the identity of lightning with machine electricity, 
without asking himself many times over what would be the con- 
sequents in fact, if his hypothesis should prove true. We know 
that Sir Isaac Newton drew certain inferences from the supposi- 
tion that the law of gravitation was real, when combined with a 
false datum in respect to the earth's diameter ; and because ob- 
served facts did not coincide with the theory, he did not accept 
the theory w T hich his so-called induction had already reached. 

Induction and Deduction, like the analysis and synthesis of 
which they are special forms, accompany each other in all the 
higher processes of thought. The two blend together so inti- 
mately that it is often difficult to sever them, or to find or trace 
the line where the one begins and the other terminates. 

Thus far we have considered Deduction and Induction together. 
We proceed to study them apart, chiefly from a psychological 
point of view — beginning with Deduction. 

§ 219. Our chief inquiry is, what is the proper 
conception of the deductive as an intellectual process; 
and incidental to this, what is the nature and what 
are the results of the product which it evolves. To answer this 



The forms of 
deduction. 



§ 219. REASONING — DEDUCTION OR MEDIATE JUDGMENT. 369 

question satisfactorily we must consider, first of all, the forms of 
language in which the process is expressed and its results are 
preserved. 

These forms are two, the Entliymeme and the Syllogism, or the 
abbreviated and the expanded syllogism. The enthymeme consists 
of two expressed propositions, which are connected by because or 
therefore. The syllogism consists of three, of which the first two are 
simple assertions, and the third is introduced by therefore. For 

-i t r . f usurper, ) ,7 /• if cannot exact obedience : ) 

example, M is a { law/u i{ ul ' er) j therefore he { ought t0 be oheyed . \ 

■m r f cannot exact allegiance, ) -, 7 . f a usurper; ) 

Or, M [ ou(jU to be obeyed, \ OeCdUSe he K {atavfutruUrs) are 

examples of the two forms of the enthymeme. j Every lawfu^ruier 

require allegiance ; j tit • fa usurper, \ , ■, n -\ir f cannoi; require 
oughtto be obeyed;} iVlls [ a lawful ruler, J tnereIore iV1 { ought to ba 

obeyed 110 ' j are examples of the expanded syllogism. 

In the enthymeme, the first proposition may be either the con- 
clusion, or it may be the reason. In the syllogism, the first 
proposition is called the major premise ; the second, the minor 
premise ; and the third, the conclusion. 

The two premises of every syllogism must have one term 
common to both, which is called the middle term. In the ex- 
amples given — lawful ruler and usurper are the middle terms 
respectively of the two syllogisms. Unless there is this middle 
term, there is no force or convincing power in the argument 
if we introduce two middle terms, there is no conclusion. The 
middle term must also have the relation affirmed to the other 
two. If we substitute worthy or unworthy person for lawful ruler 
or usurper, the conclusion will be false. 

Every enthymeme can be expanded into a syllogism. The 
syllogism when expanded expresses in separate propositions the 
truths which the enthymeme implies. There is in every enthy- 
meme the suppressed premise of a syllogism. When we reason 
in the examples given, M is a lawful ruler, therefore he ought to 
be obeyed, or M ought to be obeyed because he is the lawful 
ruler, we believe and imply in the argument — though we do not 
assert — that every lawful ruler ought to be obeyed. This is the 
major premise of the syllogism into which the enthymeme is by 
this addition expanded. The difference between the enthymeme 
and the syllogism is only a difference between a. contracted and 

16 * 



370 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§220. 



an expanded form of expression ; or between an elliptical and a 
fully explicated sentence. It is a difference of language only, 
and not in the least a difference of thought or of the relations 
of thought or knowledge ; what is expressed in the one, being 
implied in the other. 

S^SST § 22 °- The syllogism is the only form which fully 
uon' ° f dedu ° expresses in language all the processes in the act of 
deduction. Some have contended that it is one of the forms of 
deduction, but not the sole form appropriate to it. Thus, Princi- 
pal Campbell in his Philosophy of Rhetoric contends that the syl- 
logistic is only one of the possible methods of reasoning, while 
there are others which are in many cases greatly to be pre- 
ferred to this ; and J. S. Mill, in his Logic, urges that it is not a 
form of reasoning at all, but a convenient expedient for recording 
and referring to the results of our experience in particular or 
individual cases. It is obvious, for the reasons already given, 
that it is a form into which all deductive reasoning may be 
phrased, and it is the one and the only form in which all the 
materials considered and the relations involved are fully stated 
in language. When for example we supply the premise that 
had been suppressed in the enthymeme, we do not add that 
which is superfluous to the process through which we have gone, 
or to the argument which the process implied. We simply 
express in language what we had thought or were ready to think 
in fact — that which if we had not believed when we drew our 
conclusion, we should not have reached it at all. Thus, if we 
did not believe that all lawful rulers ought to be obeyed, we 
could not reach the inference that M ought to be obeyed because 
he is the lawful ruler. 

Again ; In the syllogism the process of reasoning is fully ex- 
panded and complete. Any additional propositions, whether 
connected with either of the premises or with the conclusion, are 
seen at once to be a premise* or a conclusion of another syllo- 
gism. If for example we enlarge the premise, "all lawful 
rulers ought to be obeyed," by the reason " because it is the 
will of God, or an obvious duty," we introduce an additional 
process of reasoning, the object of which is to prove that the first 
premise is correct. If we add a reason for holding that M is a 
lawful ruler, as " because he has been properly commissioned or 



§221. REASONING. DEDUCTION OR MEDIATE JUDGMENT. 371 

fairly elected," we do the same for the second premise. If we 
annex to the conclusion an additional remark, as " therefore M 
ought to be obeyed, and to disobey him is a serious crime," we 
simply introduce a second conclusion, which requires another ar* 
gument to support it. 

Every argument, whether positive or negative, whether the 
propositions are universal or particular, can be expressed in the 
form which has already been stated, by changes in the phrase- 
ology or the position of the terms, without affecting the sense or 
the force of the argument. 

This is demonstrated at length in every treatise on formal 
logic. A few examples will suffice for our purpose. If we 
make the first premise negative by substituting " no lawful ruler 
should be disobeyed," the real nature of the argument is not 
changed. The same is true if in the second premise we substi- 
tute " M rules lawfully " for " M is a lawful ruler " — a proposition 
of content for one of extent. 

If we change the form of the first premise by inverting the 
order of the terms, that is, by conversion, which we can do with 
the negative premise and retain its full meaning, we bring the 
middle term into the predicate of each of the premises ; but the 
argument and its power to prove a conclusion are the same. 

If we convert the second, or minor premise, we bring the mid- 
dle term into the subject of each premise, but this does not alter 
the strength of the argument. 

If we transpose the order of the premises, the relation of each 
part to the conclusion is the same, whatever may be the order in 
which the two are uttered. All these changes can be made in 
the arrangement of the parts of the syllogism, without affecting 
the nature or force of the argument. 

§ 221. The rules for testing the validity of the for ^£f a th ° e r 
syllogism may all be founded on the maxim, usually s y llo s ism - 
called the dictum de omni et nidlo. It is as follows : whatever is 
predicated of a class either affirmatively or negatively, may be 
affirmed of whatever is contained in or under the clasp. 

For this dictum, later logicians have substituted the maxim, 
Nota notce est etiam nota rei, repugnans notce repugnat etiam rei. 
This is adopted by J. S. Mill in his Logic, I., c. ii, § 3. It is the 
same in principle with the dictum of Aristotle. The same is 



372 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§221 



true of the special construction of the syllogism proposed by 
Hamilton, by which the propositions are stated in relations of 
quantity, and the dictum de omni et nullo is displaced by whatever 
is a part of a part is a part of the containing whole. 

In another form this dictum would be founded on the fact that 
the middle term, as it is a concept, stands to other notions in 
the two relations of extent and content, and would read thus, " A 
notion that is, or is not, in any extent, may, or may not, take to 
itself the notion which is of its content^ The last formula has 
the advantage of stating concisely both the likeness and the differ- 
ence between an act of judgment and an act of reasoning. For in 
an act of judgment, as we have seen, a concept may be expanded 
either in the direction of its extent or of its content. So far as 
the single act of judgment is concerned, the notion is viewed in 
only one relation, that of its extent or of its content, as the case 
may be. But in an act of reasoning, a notion, i. e., the middle 
term, is viewed in both these relations at once, and the result is 
that a relation is developed and observed between notions, which 
had not been discerned before. 

But neither the relations of a genus to a species nor those of a 
part to a whole, nor those of extent and content combined, give to 
the premises of the syllogism the power of demonstration. They 
suggest and they test the validity of a syllogism, but they do 
not explain that in the deductive process which gives it convin- 
cing power over the mind. No syllogism is valid to w r hich the 
dictum de omni et nullo cannot be applied, but it does not follow 
that the maxim expresses the real ground of our faith in the psy- 
chological process which we call deduction. The relations of 
both major and minor terms to the extent and the content of 
the middle, may be the only relations that need to be expressed 
in language, and yet may not develop or exhibit the real relation 
which leads to our assent to the conclusion. 

In point of fact, every attempt to explain the deductive pro- 
cess, as such, by these relations, has failed, and the failure of 
these attempts has perpetually exposed the doctrine of the syllo- 
gism to suspicion and contempt. Cf. Locke, Essay, B. IV.,Ohap. 
17, § § 4-8; G. Campbell, Phil of Rhetoric, B. L, Chap. 6; D 
Stewart, Elements, P. II., Chaps. 2, 3 & 4 ; J. S. Mill, System of 
Logic, B. II., Chap. 3 ; S. Bailey, TJieory of Reasoning. 



§ 222. REASONING. DEDUCTION OR MEDIATE JUDGMENT. 373 

The real error or defect consists in making the essence or im- 
port of both induction and deduction to consist in classification 
and the apprehension of class relations. If induction consists 
only or chiefly in establishing general facts by extended observa- 
tion, then deduction must by consequence signify the recognition 
of what must already have been known in the formation of the 
class. If induction is a synthesis of individuals into a compre- 
hensive whole, then deduction must be an analysis of this whole 
into its parts. If the synthesis has been carefully made, then the 
analysis is unnecessary because it is superfluous. According to 
this view of the two processes, deduction is only subsidiary to in- 
duction, and when we seem to perform the process of demonstra- 
tion or proof, it is the inductive and not the deductive element 
which gives it any value or force. 

§ 222. The relation which is characteristic of the 
deductive process is that of a reason to its consequent, 2Jtt?S33£l 



or of a ground to its inference. It is by means of consent t0 
this relation that we know objects by means of this 
process of knowledge. This relation is suggested to the mind in 
the syllogism by the relation of a whole to a part, but it is not 
therefore resolvable into this relation, nor should it be confounded 
with it. When we say, all magnets attract iron ; this is a magnet ? 
therefore it attracts iron ; the word all suggests or indicates that 
there is some reason founded on the nature or properties of the 
magnet, which forces us to believe that this particular magnet 
will do the same. This relation finds expression in language by 
because in the enthymeme, and by therefore in the syllogism. 
Because signifies by cause of. Therefore means for, i. e., on account 
of that, viz., that which had been previously stated in the pre- 
mises ; there being equivalent to the foregoing. Both words signify 
by reason of 

In other words, in order to explain the process of deductive 
reasoning, we must assume that every thing that exists and occurs, 
whether in the material or spirit world, exists and occurs under 
the real relation of causation, or constituent elements and laws. 
Every phenomenon and every thought-creation in the universe 
exists by the workings of powers with which finite agents are en- 
dowed, in obedience to fixed conditions and laws, in order to 
accomplish rational ends or results. Every such existence is an 



374 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



222. 



effect ; material things, spiritual agents, nay, even mathematical 
and logical concepts. The nature and the constitution of these 
effects are all explained by the causes, conditions, and ends, by, 
under, and for which, they are conceived to exist and to act. 
Any one of these elements, when applied to explain their existence, 
or to confirm our knowledge when we seek explanation or 
proof, is called a reason. When such a reason is discovered to 
explain or account for a fact or phenomenon, the process is called 
induction. When it is applied to impart or confirm knowledge 
concerning a fact or truth in respect to which the mind seeks to 
be informed or convinced, the process is called deduction. To 
know by either or both of these processes is to know by a reason, 
— it is to reason, ratiocinari ; it is reasoning, raiiocinatio. 

For proof of this we appeal to the process of reasoning itself. 
In doing so, we should not employ any of those trivial examples 
which occur in most books of logic, but rather select some exam- 
ple of the process of deduction when it is of actual service, i. e., 
when it is employed to relieve the mind from doubt, or to answer 
its questionings as to what is true. In every such case we shall 
find that the mind has no direct access to the object before it, and 
can gain no immediate or intuitive knowledge. It is the cause, 
the effect or the law, the end or the means, — one side or term, — to 
which the mind has any means of access. But it knows or may 
know that under the law of causation this is necessarily connected 
with the other term. The use of this relation for the relief of 
doubt or the acquisition of knowledge, is reasoning. When the 
relation of causation is applied to this use it passes into the rela- 
tion of reason and its consequent. The necessary connection in- 
volved in causation when thus applied gives to deduction con- 
vincing force. This discerned necessary connection between a 
cause and its effect, means and end, etc., etc., is what we call the 
force of demonstration or deduction. 



That the deductive process and the syllogism arc founded on the relation of 
causality was distinctly taught by Aristotle. Ho remarks, A na I. Post., II., 2 : to 
fxeu yap Htlov to /xe'ow, which means in this connection, the middle term, is causal 
in its significance. To tho like effect is the passage, Anal. Post., II., 12, to yap 
jjoe'o-oj/ aiTioc Aristotle distinguishes between the cause of being and the cause 
of knowing, — ratio esticndi and ratio cognoscendi, i. c., between the cause slikI 
the reason, but he docs not show how the one is related to the other. 

Tho later Greek logicians being more occupied with tho forms of tho syllogism 



§ 223. REASONING. DEDUCTION OR MEDIATE JUDGMENT. 375 

and its application to tho detection of fallacies than with its psychological import, 
left very much out of view this important hint of their great master. The scholas- 
tics committed the double error of believing that the syllogism was the sole instru- 
ment of acquiring new knowledge, or of discovery properly so-called, to the 
neglect of induction ; and of supposing that the formal relations of the syllogism 
constituted and measured all the relations of things. Hence the axioms were so 
generally received in the Continental schools, that the principles of identity, of con- 
tradiction, and excluded middle — the so-called laws of thought — are the only 
criteria of real truth and actual knowledge, and that the process of deduction itself 
can be explained by these axioms. 

Leibnitz is a distinguished and notable exception to this nearly uniform course 
of speculation. He asserts that, for the purpose of philosophy, besides the 
principle of contradiction another is required, viz., the principle of the sufficient 
reason. But the principle of the sufficient reason of Leibnitz is explained and 
applied by himself indifferently, alike to the causes of actually existing phe- 
nomena and the reasons of demonstrated truth. That is, the ratio essendi is 
not distinguished from the ratio cognoscendi, and of course there is no attempt to 
show the relation of the one to the other. It is not surprising that a principle 
so imperfectly enounced did not take a permanent place in the schools of philo- 
sophy. Even Wolf himself, Leibnitz's professed disciple and expounder (OntoL. 
§ 70 sqq. ; Met., jJ 30 sqq.), attempts to resolve the law of causation and the suffi- 
cient reason into the law of contradiction. The tendency of modern philosophy 
has been to consider the law of the sufficient reason as extra-logical (Hamilton, 
Di8.,-p. 603), or to derive it in both forms, of real and logical cause, from the 
relations of concepts to concepts, instead of founding the ratio cognoscendi on the 
ratio essendi, i. e., on the relations of things ; thereby inverting the processes 
of nature and destroying confidence in the grounds of knowledge and of faith. 

§ 223. The conception of the logical reason is 
wider in its range and application than that of the logical reasons 
real cause on which it is founded. The real cause is laws? 11863 and 
usually prior to the effect which it produces. The 
mind in apprehending or observing its actual workings, assumes 
or supposes the cause, in order to anticipate or explain the actual 
effect. But in applying this relation for the purposes of reason- 
ing, the mind may begin with the effect and conclude to a cause, 
as properly as when it begins with the cause and reasons to an 
effect. Either involves the other in a connection of thought ; 
either can be made to imply the other in the order of deduction 
or reasoning. 

The reason and the cause coincide, when from an actual cause, 
(the conditions and laws being included or supposed,) we reason 
to the certainty or reality of the effect. Thus the fire did or will 
fall into a vessel of gunpowder, therefore an explosion did or 
will occur. They diverge, when we reason from the effect to the 



376 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§224, 



cause, i. e., when the effect is made the reason for our belief in ol 
knowledge of the cause : as the vessel of gunpowder exploded, 
therefore heat in some form was present. The known effect is in 
this case the reason for the believed or proved conclusion. 

In a similar way we reason both forwards and backwards from 
the means to the end and from the end to the means, making 
either the end or the means the reason, and the means or the end 
the conclusion. So in moral action we reason from the motives 
forward to the act or purpose, and backward from the act or 
purpose to the impelling motives, making either the reason for 
believing the other, with such reservations as the nature of their 
mutual activity requires. 

The distinction should also be noticed between causes, i. e. 
powers, and laws. Laws designate those permanent circumstances 
or relations which, though not separate agents themselves, modify 
the production of the effect, so that with or without these, the 
effect does or does not actually occur, or the energy of the effect 
varies as these circumstances vary. The best example of a law 
as distinguished from a cause or agent, is the law of gravitation 
— according to which the force varies inversely as the square 
of the distance. For the purposes of reasoning, however, the 
law may be viewed as giving efficiency to the cause ; i. e., the 
power in question, e. g. f gravitation, is known or manifested as a 
cause which we can apply in deduction, so far as or when it obeys 
certain laws. 

§ 224. When we employ reasons to prove geomet- 
Geometrical Y ' 1CSL \ truth, the grounds of the process and the 

reasons. » o i 

conviction which it imparts are found in the nature 
of the materials conceived as necessitating certain products or 
effects in a way similar to that in which an existing agent, 
whether matter or spirit, brings to pass its results. The triangle, 
square, cube and sphere are regarded as possessed of certain 
properties, which, when subjected to certain changes, or brought 
into certain combinations, make the existence of certain other 
properties necessary. The ratio essendi, or the conceived proper- 
ties of the geometrical figures in space as constructed by the 
mind becomes the ratio cognoscendi. The geometrical figure 
is regarded as having causal efficiency, the effects or consequences 
of which cannot be set aside. 



§ 221. REASONING. — DEDUCTION OR MEDIATE JUDGMENT. 377 

Thus: two triangles are similar, i. e., their sides and cor- 
responding angles are equal, because they are the halves made 
by the diagonal of a parallelogram. The reason is found in thv 
properties of the parallelogram. But these properties are deter- 
mined by the constructive acts of the mind, space being assumed 
as allowing the mind to conceive or construct certain figures. 
These figures when constructed are divided, i. e., new figures are 
constructed — they are compared with each other — they are su- 
perimposed upon one another — in short, there is a series of con- 
secutive acts passing into effects, the acts determining the effects, 
and the effects being determined or defined by the mind's acts 
and the material, viz., space, with which it works. We reason 
from these acts, i. e., from that conceived as the cause to the effect, 
or from the effect back to the cause, precisely as when the cause 
and effect are material. 

The same is true, when we reason from the essential consti- 
tuents of a logical concept ; or construct what some logicians 
call immediate syllogisms, e. g., conclusions of logical conversion, 
etc. These last scarcely deserve to be called proper, as the process 
is merely formal. But if they are so regarded, then the parts 
and the whole, from one to the other of which in such cases we 
reason, have been previously fixed by the thinking power, or the 
power to generalize at all. These logical products, as wholes and 
parts, positives and negatives, etc., are regarded as causal of 
certain results to any objects brought into certain relations with 
them. They are reasoned of as though they were actually exist- 
ing beings with causal properties obeying unchanging laws. By 
the same rule : We say, some islands are surrounded by w T ater, 
because all islands are surrounded by water. Any special act 
of duty can only be performed by a moral being, because duty 
in every case is the act of such a being. 



378 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§226. 



CHAPTER VII. 






Reasoning. — varieties of deduction. 

§ 225. The sameness of the process of deduction 
«re * T tfifi; enables us to understand the diversity in the several 



Shese 
Vided 



subdi- 



varieties of deductive reasoning. These are deter- 
mined by the differences in the subject-matter upon 
or about which the process of deduction is employed, so far as 
this subject-matter occasions a difference ir. the character of the 
reasons upon which the reasoning depends. Material forces and 
reasons differ from the psychological and moral. Both these are 
■unlike the mathematical. Those which are purely logical differ 
from all the others. These differences in the subject matter also 
require a special preparation in each case, in order to make it 
ready for the application of the deductive process proper. 

The varieties of deductive reasoning usually recognized are 
Ike Probable, the Mathematical, and the Formal. 

Probable reasoning is again subdivided into three, the physi- 
cal, the psychological, and the historical, according as the subject- 
matter is physical beings and phenomena, spiritual agents and 
their manifestations, or those combinations of the two which 
make up human history. It is often called applied reasoning, 
because its materials are facts known by observation and induc- 
tion, and its processes are applied to the materials thus acquired 
or furnished. 

Mathematical reasoning is threefold, according as it is con- 
cerned with continued or discrete quantity, or as it combines the 
methods appropriate to each. It is geometrical, arithmetical 
and analytical. 

Formal reasoning concerns itself with pure concepts abstracted 
from all beings and phenomena, and with the relations which 
such concepts involve. It is sometimes technically styled simply 
logical deduction, and its arguments are called immediate, or 
purely logical, syllogisms. 

§ 226. In probable or applied deduction, we may 
eoning. ° rea " for the present assume that the premises are fur- 
nished by induction and observation. In applied 



§ 226. REASONING. — VARIETIES OF DEDUCTION. 379 

reasoning as denned, induction is always necessary to furnish 
major premises, because there can be no reasons, if there are no 
general or universal powers or laws. For minor premises in 
these cases, observation often suffices, because it often furnishes 
individual facts or events. When these minor premises affirm 
any thing of a class of generalized objects, induction may be re- 
quired as well as observation. This description of reasoning 
is called probable, sometimes problematical and moral, simply 
because the subject-matter depends on causes which are con- 
tingent and is not necessarily true. Its reality cannot be proved 
by demonstrative evidence. As such it is contrasted with the 
mathematical and formal, the subject-matter of which is in no 
sense a real being or event, and is dependent on no contingency 
for its existence or occurrence, but on the properties or relations 
of mathematical and logical concepts. The terms probable, etc., 
do not, however, imply that the processes involved are less valid or 
convincing, or that the premises or conclusions are less trustworthy. 
But whether the reasoning process, as such, relates to facts of 
matter, to facts of spirit, or to facts of history, it rests upon 
reasons in the way already explained. The facts are reasoned 
out whenever the power or law with its conditions is employed to 
prove that they must have occurred inasmuch as the causes 
exist which require them ; or whenever facts or events known to 
exist are explained by being referred to such agencies or laws. 

Thus, the suspended weight let loose, it is reasoned, must fall, 
because the force of gravitation is always in action ; or the reason 
why it fell, or why it ought to be believed that it fell, is that this 
power was acting at the time, under certain of its laws. 

In the sphere of spirit, I reason that at the thought of Han- 
nibal I shall always think of Fabius, because the two, by asso- 
ciation, have become permanently fixed in my thoughts, By a 
reference to the operation of this power under its laws, I explain 
the fact, that I thought of Fabius a moment previous. 

The student and interpreter of history reasons concerning the 
events of the past when he seeks to explain them by their appro- 
priate causes and laws, or to forecast the future by means of the 
great forces or agencies, — the so-called principles — through 
which the course of events and the results of important move- 
ments in society can be interpreted. 



380 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§227. 



Deduction is more satisfactory and convincing when applied 
to material than when applied to spiritual phenomena, because 
the agencies known in the one sphere are more numerous than in 
the other, and because the laws according to which these 
agencies produce their results are capable of being expressed in 
mathematical formulae. Hence, in many of the physical sciences 
we apply the rigor, the certainty and the variety of geometrical 
deduction, as in Mechanics, Optics, Navigation, Theoretical As- 
tronomy and Chemical Analysis. 

§ 227. This introduces into the sphere of pure de- 

Mathematical . . . . 

reasoning, ma- duction a second element, viz., the mathematical, which 

terials of. . . . . . 

in many or the physical sciences, is combined with 
that which is contingent or problematical, but which in the pure 
or abstract mathematics, gives character to what is called by 
eminence mathematical reasoning. 

The objects or entities with which mathematical reasoning is 
concerned, are constructed by the mind itself on the suggestion 
of, and of course with reference to, certain material things and 
occurring acts, which are related to one another in space and 
time. Hence these entities themselves have certain definite re- 
lations to space and time, which are called their properties. 

We find ourselves, at a certain stage of intellectual develop- 
ment, possessed of the concepts which are employed in geometry, 
arithmetic, and algebra — as the Point, the Line, the Supwficies, 
the Triangle, the Square, the Circle, the Cube, the Sphere, the Cone, 
etc., as also the Unit, the Sum, the Difference, the Multiple, the 
Divisor and the Ratio. 

These are properly called concepts or general notions. The 
individual objects of which these concepts are amrmable are, as 
it would seem at first, individual objects of sense or spirit ; as 
when we affirm a line, or point, or superficies to belong to a 
block of ivory. On second thought, we are sure that the mathe- 
matical point, line, or surface, cannot belong to any material 
object as such, for the reason that there are no perfectly even oi 
sharp edges or even planes in any material object. Nor are there 
in nature any perfect units, exactly the counterparts of one an- 
other. 

These individual entities are then generalized, and become 
concepts ; having a content and extent, and being capable, of 



§ 228. REASONING. — VARIETIES OF DEDUCTION. 381 

definition, division, and classification. The individual and tha 
general are however scarcely distinguished by the mind itself. 
Indeed, in the mathematical processes the mind passes so quickly 
from the individual to the general and returns so readily to the 
individual as not always to notice for the moment with which it 
has to do, whether with the lines and triangles as individuals, or 
with them as the representatives of all conceivable lines and tri- 
angles. 

It is another marked and distinctive peculiarity of these rela- 
tions, that they are clearly and entirely distinguishable from all 
other generalized properties. The length, breadth, etc., of any 
material object cannot be confounded with its sensible qualities, 
nor can the relations of number be mistaken for those proper- 
ties of matter or spirit of which sense or consciousness takes cog- 
nizance. Not only are they clearly separated as classes, but each 
member of the class is sharply separable from every other. The 
line can not possibly be confounded with the surface, nor the sum 
w T ith the difi'erence. 

§ 228. These concepts, like all others, can, as has been 
explained , be expanded into propositions of content and Definitions and 
extent. Mathematical propositions of content are the 
definitions which state the attributes that constitute the essence 
of each of the complex concepts which we form by mathematical 
construction, as the square, the triangle, the cube, etc., etc. 
The best and most satisfactory definitions are those which bring 
directly before the mind the act or process by which the concepts 
are supposed to be constructed. 

Such definitions we sometimes phrase in the language of com- 
mand, as, draw me a line, move a plane, etc. For this reason 
they are called postulates, postulate/,, i. e., concepts which may be 
constructed and assumed without dissent. The definitions of the 
concepts of number scarcely need to be given. We assume at 
once that all men know what they signify. When an explana- 
tion of them is required, we refer directly to the process of num- 
bering, i. e., we count by a series produced by the constant addi- 
tion of units. Mathematical definitions also state the entire im- 
port or essence of their concepts. We are certain that the defini- 
tions of a triangle and square are exhaustive. Such concepts are 
in their very nature transparent : we can see through them as 



382 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§228. 






through crystal water to the bottom of a mountain lake. We 
know that the properties enumerated perfectly distinguish eacb 
concept from every other. The definition does not indeed ex- 
press all that is true of its concept as related to every other i& 
every conceivable combination, (else reasoning or analysis could 
not add to our knowledge,) but it gives all that is essential to 
enable the mind to distinguish it from every other, and adequately 
to define what its content is. 

Mathematical propositions of extent are such as these : Trian- 
gles are plane or spherical ; and each of these is acute, obtuse, 
or right-angled. For the same reason that mathematical defi- 
nitions are exhaustive, mathematical divisions are known to be 
complete. As the first are exhaustive, on account of the limited 
number of the elements involved, it follows, that all the subdivi- 
sions which depend upon such elements, can be easily compassed, 
and confidently enumerated by the mind, 

Hamilton pertinently observes : " Mathematical, like all other 
reasoning, is syllogistic ; but here, the perspicuous necessity of the 
matter necessitates the correctness of the form ; we cannot reason 
wrong." 

Axioms are prominently employed in mathematical reasoning. 
Axioms differ from definitions in this, that they state the neces- 
sary relations that are involved in the nature or application of all 
the concepts of quantity as such, whereas the definiton expands 
the content or extent of some special concept. 

Axioms are of two species, the analytic and the synthetic. 
Examples of analytic axioms are such propositions as the fol- 
lowing, 'the whole is greater than its part,' and 'things that are 
equal to the same thing are equal to one another.' 

They are called analytic propositions as contrasted with synthe- 
tic, because, as it is contended, they evolve or explicate in the 
predicate what is impliedly known or assumed in the subject. 

There is another class of axioms, such as these : Two straight 
lines cannot inclose a space : Two or more parallel lines, if pro- 
duced ever so far in either direction, can never meet. These 
examples apply to geometrical quantity only. These are clearly 
synthetical propositions. Whatever may be true of those of the 
other class, in axioms of this sort the predicate contains matter 
which the subject does not imply. And yet these propositions 



§ 229. REASONING.— VARIETIES OF DEDUCTION. 383 

are self-evident and intuitively true. They cannot and need not 
be demonstrated. 

The question has been earnestly agitated whether the axioms 
or the definitions are the foundations of geometrical reasoning. 
It has been very generally held that the axioms are the real prin- 
cipia upon which such reasoning depends : that is, that they are 
the unproved but assumed major premises of which, with certain 
minor premises furnished by the definitions, all those syllogisms 
are constructed that make up the demonstrations of geometry. 

It is obvious that the only kind of axioms to which this ques- 
tion can apply, is the first of the two classes above cited, the so- 
called analytic axioms. Those of the second class, all would 
concede, are as truly principles as are the definitions ; i. e., they 
are as well fitted to serve as major premises for syllogisms. 

The method after which the demonstrations are conducted 
by Euclid, has lent a decided support to this view. In all these 
demonstrations, these axioms are constantly cited as major 
premises for the truth of the conclusions which are derived from 
them. The arguments are in substance as follows : All things 
that are equal to the same thing, are equal to one another. The 
case of the equality of the two lines or angles A, and B, to a third 
C, is a case of the kind. Therefore, this is a case of their being 
equal to one another. — A is equal to B. 

Against this doctrine cf. Locke, Essay, B. iv. c. vii. § 10. Beid, 
Essays on the Intel. Powers, Essay vi. chaps, v. and vii. Princi- 
pal Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, B. i. c. v. § 1. Dug aid 
Stewart, Elements, Part ii. subd. i. c. i. sec. i. (1) and (2). 

For our present purpose, it is of little consequence to deter- 
mine whether the axioms or the definitions are or are not the 
foundations of geometrical deduction. In the one case we begin 
our series of deductions with certain general truths that are 
more extensive than, and are prior to the subject-matter of 
geometry. In the other we find our first propositions in the de< 
finitions, or the additional truths which the definitions introduce 
and make possible. 

§ 229. It is more important to observe that what 

. . . - Tbe construc- 

is called geometrical demonstration is very jar jrom tion of geome- 
being a process of pure deduction. As preliminary to Auxiliary nne$ 
this and coincident with almost every one of its steps, 



384 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 229. 

a process is carried forward of preparing the materials concerning 
which we reason, so that they can be brought into comparison. 
This is ordinarily termed the construction of the diagram or the 
drawing of auxiliary lines. In some cases these constructions 
are very easy and simple, in others they are difficult and com- 
plex. In all cases they task the power of ready invention, and 
fertile suggestion. The preparation of the diagram for the de- 
monstration of the 47th prop. 1st book, of Euclid's Geometry, 
is no inconsiderable achievement of inventive skill and sagacity. 

It ought to be observed, that in order to be certain of the 
possibility of drawing some of these lines, and of the character 
of the figures which will result from them, we can neither 
depend upon the axioms or definitions, nor upon the results of 
previous reasoning processes, but must rely solely upon our 
direct intuition of the properties and relations of the figures 
which our postulates enable us to draw, and which our defini- 
tions describe. We know, for example, by intuition only, that 
we can connect the opposite extremities of a square or rectangle, 
and that the diagonal thus drawn will divide the rectangle into 
two triaugles with a common base. In constructing a rectangle, 
we must presuppose the space which we circumscribe, and some 
of the consequent relations to it and to one other of its bound- 
ing lines. So soon as we divide this space, we add to this know- 
ledge also, by direct inspection or intuition. The same is true 
whenever we add to or divide any construction, whether one 
that is original or superinduced. 

It should be noticed, that in all cases of complicated geometri- 
cal construction, the completion of the diagram is the result, to a 
large degree, of a tentative process. We draw a line, and then 
observe whether the new relations brought into existence by this 
construction may serve as connecting links between the proposed 
conclusion and its proof. The new constructions which we form for 
each new theorem, furnish fresh material for yet other processes 
of deduction, and thus enlarge the material by successive syn- 
theses, to which our deductions can be applied. The new truths 
which these new constructions enable us to discover are intuitively 
assented to, both in their conditions and their evidence. They are 
axiomatic, and similar to the axioms of the second class which we 
have already considered. The number of such axiomatic, i. e., 



§ 230. REASONING. — VARIETIES OF DEDUCTION. 385 

obvious truths made possible by the endless variety of geometrical 
constructions, is well nigh unlimited. With every new construction, 
some new relation is evoked, and its truth is intuitively assented to. 
Moreover, in geometrical reasoning the several quantities must 
be measured by or with one another. The diagrams are con- 
structed, and the needful auxiliary lines are drawn solely in order 
that the parts may be so prepared that one may be compared 
with another. As the triangle is the simplest figure that can be 
constructed, the original measurement to which, in the last 
analysis, all others are reduced, and by which they are tested, is 
that of two triangles. In Playfair's Geometry the first act of 
demonstration and that to which all the remaining attach them- 
selves and are referred, is that of the fourth Prop, by which two 
triangles are superimposed on one another. The possibility of 
comparing two triangles being established, we have the means of 
comparing all those plane figures which can be resolved into 
equal triangles. This may be considered another auxiliary step 
in geometrical demonstration. It is obvious that this or any 
act of measurement is not deduction proper. 

$ 230. After the material has been prepared we proceed to apply- 
to it the processes of geometrical demonstration. How we do this Geometrical 
•can be understood most satisfactorily by an example. plaiued by an 

In the fifth proposition of Playfair's Geometry, B. I., it is proposed example. 
to prove that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are 
equal. The first step is to prepare the diagram by producing the two sides, A B, 
and A C, indefinitely towards D and E. 

In the lines thus drawn, the two points F and G are taken 
at equal distances from A, and B G and C F are joined. It 
is manifest, ' to the eye,' as we say, that we have two pairs 
of triangles, A B G, A C F, B C G and C B F. The first 
two have the two corresponding sides equal — the one by con- 
struction, the other by the addition of equals to equals — as 
also the included angle common. By deduction from the 
conclusion of the fourth proposition, the bases C F and BGw 
and the several angles are proved to be equal. These two 
conclusions give, in the two smaller triangles, one side of jJ 
each equal; by subtraction of the equals A B and A C from 
the equals A F and A G, the sides B F and C G are equal; that the included 
angles included between the equal sides of each are equal was proved from the 
fourth proposition. It follows by the same syllogism upon the same premises, 
that the angles B C F and G B C are equal. These equals are, then taken from 
the equals A C F and A B G, and the remainders are equal. These are the angles 
at the base of the isosceles triangle. 

17 




386 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§231. 






It will be seen that the syllogisms employed are either five or two, according as 
we consider the axioms to be or not to be the foundations of geometrical deduc- 
tion. There are three cases in which the axioms, if equals be added to or taken 
irom equals, are employed in what, in form, appear to be syllogisms. In the 
other two the conclusion of the fourth proposition is made the major premise, and 
the conclusion is regularly deduced. In all, we have a general proposition for a 
major premise, a particular case for the minor, and the conclusion made up of the 
major and minor term. That is. there are in all these cases, formal syllogisms; 
but there is this difference ; in the one case the axiom adds no force to the belief 
of the conclusion, because tbis would be equally clear to the mind without it; in 
the other, we are referred to the nature of the concept or construction — as of two 
triangles equal in two sides and the included angle — as necessarily involving 
equality in the remaining side of each. The reason for the conclusion is the pro- 
perties of such triangles as constructed by the mind, by means of the known pro- 
perties of space. It would be a trivial fiction to say that the relation of equality 
requires that two things equal to the same thing should be equal to one another ; 
but this must be said, if the axiom is a reason for the special applications of itself. 

But again : we demonstrate or deduce in this way by these two concatenated syl- 
logisms, that the angles at the base of this individual isosceles triangle are equal 
to one another. But we see at once that it must follow that whatever is true of 
this or any isosceles triangle must be true of every one. Hence we generalize 
this conclusion directly, and make it ready to be used as the major premise of 
another syllogism. This is the last step in the process of a geometrical demon- 
stration. It is not by induction proper, however, that we pass from the indi- 
vidual to the general, for the reason that the properties and relations of space 
which are used in an individual construction in space, do not like those of matter 
indicate one another with more or less probability, but each requires the other by 
an unavoidable necessity discerned by intuition. 

The processes of arithmetic and algebra are scarcely considered processes of 
deduction at all, not because deduction is not present and actually performed, but 
because it plays so inconsiderable a part in reaching the results. The chief con- 
cern of the mind in performing problems of this sort, is to invent such combina- 
tions and to apply such methods of dealing with them, as will bring to pass the 
result — which is usually to establish a new equation between elements that can 
be evolved from the data. The mind seeks to change the expression of the 
quantities given, so that they can be advantageously compared. The mind de- 
duces only when it applies some rule or principle, or uses a formula previously 
determined to be true of all members or all objects similarly situated with the 
individual case. Both these processes are similar in principle to the expedient 
»f devising auxiliury lines in geometry. The result is readily generalized. 



§ 231. The third species of deduction is the formal 
syllogism! or purely logical, such as is employed in immediate 
syllogisms. Here the reason for the conclusion is found 
in some one of the necessary relations of the concept, whenever 
Buch a relation can be applied or viewed as a cause necessitating 
a new relation expressed in the conclusion. Inasmuch as there 



§ 231. REVOKING. — VARIETIES OF DEDUCTION. 387 

are several such essential relations, a variety of such deouctions 
is possible. Syllogisms of this sort are called by Kant syllogisms 
of the understanding, because the understanding is denned by 
Kant to be the logical faculty. These conclusions are sometimes 
styled immediate, in contrast with those which are mediate, 
because they are built upon a single proposition, or more exactly 
because no middle term is present or provided in the ordinary ac- 
ceptation of the word. The major premise is derived from an 
expansion in language of those relations which necessarily be- 
long to the concept, and may be expressed in purely formal pro- 
positions. These arguments are usually treated in books of logic 
under the title of the Conversion and Opposition of Propositions, 
and often are not treated as syllogisms at all. 

The following is an example, usually cited as of subaltern 
opposition: All islands were originally attached to a continent; 
therefore, some islands, or this island, e. g., Ireland, was originally 
attached to a continent. The argument in this form is an enthy- 
meme. In order that it may be expanded into a syllogism the 
major premise is required : it becomes — whatever is true of all 
islands is true of some islands ; it is true of all islands that they 
were attached to a continent; therefore it is true of some islands 
that they belonged to a continent. 

We assert, No man is perfect ; therefore, some men, or this man 
is not perfect: the major premise being whatever is denied of all 
men is denied of some men, or this man. 

In conversion we conclude from All men are mortal, that some 
mortals are men. From No man is perfect, that no perfect being 
is a man, and so on throughout the cases that are possible, the 
major premise in each instance being a periphrastic proposition, 
as the predicate affirmed of all men may be the subjeet when 
limited by some, etc. 

It might seem at first that the proper major premise in such cases, should be 
the more general axiom, as in the first example; vihatever is true of any tohole is 
true of its pari 's. But on a second thought we correct ourselves by observing, 
that in such a case no middle term can possibly be devised to connect the major 
with the minor. The same is true, only more eminently, of what are called the 
laws of thought — as the laws of identity, of contradiction, and of the excluded 
middle ; no matter is furnished in such propositions, by which we can proceed to 
a conclusion. They are not laws of thought in the sense of being major premises 
for deduction. They are rather generalizations of the particular processes which 



388 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 232. 

the mind performs, and of the relations which they involve. They are simply 
rules for logical consistency (cf. $ 270). 

The force of the argument in all these cases is found in the 
essential nature of the concept, as involving certain relations, 
e. g., of the whole to its part, of the subject to its predicate, and of the 
positive to its negative. But the nature of the concept is but 
another name for the properties or relations which the mind ne- 
cessarily conceives every concept as possessing, which the mind 
must necessarily think it as being, or as able, in other relations, to 
effect or evolve. The purely logical properties or relations are 
viewed as causes of what is expressed in the conclusion, like phy- 
sical causes and mathematical relations, and so far forth are used 
by the mind as the reasons of the conclusions which it accepts. 

§ 232. The foregoing analysis of the varieties of 

Two elements . ,.....,. 

in most acts of deduction requires us to distinguish that part 01 the 
process which is preparative or auxiliary, from that 
which is simply and strictly deductive. That which is characteristic? 
of each one of these varieties is derived from the elements and ma- 
terials which these subsidiary processes furnish for deduction. But 
in actual reasoning, the two operations are so intimately blended 
together, that it is not easy to distinguish the one from the other. 
For example, in probable reasoning, the force and conclusiveness 
of the argument may seem to turn chiefly upon the facts of obser- 
vation and testimony which establish the minor premise, or the 
inductions which support the major, and very little upon the act 
of bringing the two together in the relations of an argument. 
As soon as the auxiliary and preliminary steps are taken, the 
conjunction of the parts as major and minor, naturally occurs to 
the mind, and, with it, the inevitable conclusion. In geometrical 
reasoning, as we have seen, the establishment of the conclusion 
sought for, depends almost entirely on the skilful suggestion of 
the appropriate auxiliary lines, and the orderly concatenation of 
the several arguments, so that the result may spring forth of it- 
self. In common life, the issue of the reasoning depends upon 
the establishment of certain facts, in connection with certain 
principles. Upon the proof of the facts and the enforcement 
and illustration of the principles, the reasoner expends the re- 
sources of memory and invention, of wit and eloquence. The 



§ 233. REASONING. — VARIETIES OP DEDUCTION. 389 

facts being established and the principles received, the argument 
enforces itself. 

Skill in the invention of middle terms, or media of proof, is an 
art in respect to which men differ more widely than in re- 
spect to merely logical consistency, or the capacity to derive con- 
clusions from their premises. Upon skill and aptness in this, is 
founded very largely the estimate in which the ability of a rea- 
soner is held. But this affluence of invention and skill in selec- 
tion must also be attended with a ready tact in forecasting all the 
results of a multitude of deductive processes, when applied to all 
the cases which invention suggests. There must also be present 
the capacity to hold the attention evenly and steadily in long 
and closely-connected series of deductions, all which capacities 
come only from the special development, and usually from the 
patient and practiced training of the philosophical powers. 
When these, habits are matured by such training, the soul learns 
to act with the precision and rapidity of intuition. It must so 
act in order to reason with success when pressed by a powerful 
antagonist, in the haste and excitement of debate, or under the 
unexpected and ingenious assaults or defences which are elicited 
in an active controversy. 

The establishment of the principles or the reasons which are 
involved and required in an argument, is often the point of chief 
importance. Inasmuch as the deductive power is prominently 
employed here, the logical faculty, or power of analytic and con- 
sistent thinking is especially tasked, and superiority in this is ne- 
cessarily manifest. The power readily and surely to fall back 
upon principles, and to apply them to special cases with apt- 
ness and force, is the power which distinguishes the reasoner from 
the man of extensive knowledge, the man of fertile invention, 
the man of ready wit, or the man eloquent in description and 
appeal. To this power must be superadded, as it is always sup- 
posed, the capacity to proceed with logical clearness and rigor 
from the reason to the conclusion. The last marks the logician pro- 
per, as he is contrasted with and distinguished from the reasoner-. 

§ 233. This analysis also enables us to answer the 
question which has been frequently agitated, whether £* ^know? 
deduction adds to our knowledge. Many have con- ll d n s a l\ In V(hal 
tended that it does not and cannot. They urge, that 



390 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 233. 

if we know the major premise, we already know the conclusion ; 
that when we assent to the major, All men are mortal, we have 
already decided the question, whether Peter is mortal, and that 
whatever advantage there may be in employing an argument, the 
argument does not add to our stock of knowledge. We do not, 
it is urged, gain by it any new truth. 

To this argument, in the form in which it is urged, we might 
reply, in the first place, that if we substitute for "we knovj 
already," the phrase " we might know if we would think or reflect," 
there would be less reason to object to it. The design of reasoning 
is often to lead a person to reflect or think concerning the applica- 
tion of the facts or principles to which he assents. When a man 
institutes a process of deduction, or follows one presented by 
another, one of three things may be true. First, he may never 
have accepted, through ignorance or want of thought, the major 
•premise, or, at least, not so distinctly as to be ready to apply it 
in every particular case. But he may be induced to accept it for 
the first time by the excitement of the occasion — i. e., by the use 
or application which is now to be made of it. Second, he may 
never before have accepted the minor so as to be able to connect 
it with the general truth, even though it had already been 
familiar to his knowledge and assent. Third, he may have ac- 
cepted both major and minor, but may never have thought of 
the two together so as to perceive that relation between the two 
which involves the conclusion. 

In the second place, an argument is usually addressed to a 
person who has not accepted a conclusion, by a person who has 
accepted it. The one who uses the argument, knows this conclu- 
sion to be true. The person to whom it is addressed has not as- 
sented to it. The argument is used to make him give this 
assent. In some sense of the phrase, it adds to the knowledge 
of the person whom it convinces. It ordinarily does this by 
leading him so to reflect, that he enlarges his knowledge or his 
belief. First, it may be, he is led to accept the major ; next, he 
assents to the minor ; and last of all, he is induced so to connect 
the two, that he himself is convinced, and of himself accepts the 
conclusion. 

Reasoning is, in fact, constantly employed to enlarge the 
knowbdo-e of men. It would be idle, as it might seem, to con- 



§ 234. INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 391 

tend that the student of a system of geometry does not increase 
his stock of knowledge, or that all the knowledge which he gains 
is acquired by induction or intuition. Deduction is constantly 
employed as a means of instruction in all departments of science, 
and it would seem with the greatest advantage to those whose 
knowledge it augments. 

But knowledge is as truly concerned with the apprehension of 
relations, as with the cognition of facts. New or additional 
knowledge is as properly the knowledge under new relations of 
facts already known or very familiar, as the acquisition of new 
facts by observation, testimony, or induction. Deduction applies 
reasons to facts or events, in order to establish their truth, or ex- 
plain their existence or occurrence. It is often required, as we 
know, to convince ourselves or others that a fact or event must 
have been true or must have occurred. The man that is con- 
vinced by such a process of the reality of any fact, must thereby 
have gained new knowledge of its relations. 

Or, again, the process is applied to explain why it occurred ; 
the fact or event being admitted, the reason for its occurrence is 
asked for- When such reason is given by the application of the 
deductive process, the fact is known in a new relation. The 
knowledge of the fact as explained by its reason is certainly new 
knowledge. Deduction applies general causes, elements or pro- 
perties, as reasons to confirm or explain events and facts. It not 
only adds to our knowledge, but it adds knowledge of a kind 
which is eminent for its worth and dignity — thought-knowledge of 
the most exalted character — knowledge in the light of the prin- 
ciples and laws which govern and explain all individual facts 
and events. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 

§ 234. We have seen that, in order to perform 
those processes of deduction which relate to facts and propwiy^and 
events— the processes called probable reasoning— the Kd? eriT ** 
mind must be furnished with major premises or gen- 
eral propositions. 



392 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 234. 

The process by which we gain the truths thus applied, is called 
induction or inductive reasoning. We proceed to inquire : What 
is the nature of this process? What are the conditions and 
grounds of its exercise? What the assumptions on which it 
rests? What are its applications to human knowledge, and 
what the rules for its successful use? 

Induction is usually defined as the deriving generals from parti- 
culars ; and in this is contrasted with deduction, in which we are 
said to proceed from generals to particulars. This definition is 
correct so far as it goes, but it is by no means precise or exhaust- 
ive. There are many processes conceivable, in which we derive 
generals from particulars which are not processes of induction. 
For example : We observe ten oranges, and, noticing them one 
by one, perceive a common likeness of qualities. We gather the 
results of our observations into the general judgment or proposi- 
tion : all these oranges are slightly oval, or light yellow, or yellow 
mottled with green. It is obvious that such a judgment, though 
general and derived from particulars, has not been gained by 
induction. This is further obvious from the fact, that such propo- 
sitions cannot be applied in deduction. To seek thus to apply 
them, would be an idle form, attended by no advantage, and 
leading to no conviction. If all that we know or had learned 
was simply : all swans hitherto observed were white, or all men 
observed or reported have died, we should already have included 
in the major premise the truth of the conclusion, and it would 
be idle to expand the knowledge already gained into a form of 
deduction. With such general propositions as premises, deductive 
reasoning would be either superfluous or impertinent. 

" If induction," says Galileo, " must go through every indi- 
vidual instance, it would be either useless or impossible ; impossi- 
ble if the number of cases were infinite ; useless, because then the 
universal proposition would add nothing new to our knowledge." 

And yet inductions like these — so-called — have been named 
by some the only perfect or truly logical inductions. (Cf. Sir Wm. 
Hamilton, Logic, Lee. xvii. §62; Lee. xxxiii. § 108; Appendix 
vii.) It is sufficient to observe that, if such inductions are ex- 
posed to no error, they contribute no truth. They are safe but 
useless, for they admit of no application, except as a convenience 
for the memory. 






§ 234. INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 393 

That which is properly called induction is a process of another 
character. Examples of it are such as these. I observe a 
certain number of oranges, and, noticing their characteristics, 
infer or believe that all oranges have certain peculiarities of 
form, internal constitution, habits of growth, etc., etc. In like 
manner, I infer all swans are and must be white ; not merely all 
the swans that have existed, or those which have been observed 
or described, but the whole species in the past, the present, and 
the future. In such cases we take the examples which we have 
observed, to stand for or represent the entire class. 

It follows that judgments of induction differ from simple judg- 
ments, in certain important particulars. To return to our first 
example ; we see ten oranges with certain well-defined character- 
istics. We bring them under their appropriate concepts, and 
judge or affirm these concepts of the individual objects. In in- 
duction we proceed further : we add to these simple judgments 
yet another, viz., that what we have found to be true of these, 
may be received as true of all others like them. The ground of 
the first judgment is facts observed and compared. The ground 
of the second is what is called the analogy of nature. A judg- 
ment of induction is then a judgment of comparing observation, 
enlarged by a judgment of analogy. The judgment of observation 
is founded on observed similarity. The judgment of analogy is 
founded on an interpreted indication. 

What is usually called experience, includes acts of induction. 
Simple observation and judgment do not constitute what we 
usually call experience ; for this imports not only that we have 
made and preserved observations, but also that we are capable of 
applying their results in parallel cases. This implies the power 
to discriminate between cases that are, and those that are not 
similar. Without this power or discipline, observation or bare 
experience would be possible but useless. For it would enable 
us simply to attain and retain our knowledge of the past, but 
never to apply it to the future. 

In view of these considerations, the questions return upon us 
with augmented interest and importance : What is the ground, 
what the nature, and what are the rules for a sound induction ? 
They are questions which have often been asked, and not always 
very satisfactorily or thoroughly answered. As preliminary t« 

17* 



394 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 235. 

the development of the correct answers, and to a satisfactory 
theory of induction, we may profitably consider a few examples 
in w T hich the process has been successfully applied. 

§ 235. The inductions of common life have already 
of common life been noticed. They differ from the inductions of 
o? sdence. 10ns science, in that their results are incapable of being 
reduced to universal statements to which there are 
no exceptions. Nor do they result in the discovery of ultimate 
properties, agencies, and laws. Their results are seen in the 
common sense and common prudence which are essential to the 
performance of the common acts and duties of common life. 
Uncommon skill and readiness in interpreting such indications 
is termed acuteness, discernment, sagacity, and tact. Less than 
the usual capacity to make such inductions quickly and correctly, 
is denominated slowness and stupidity. The average capacity is 
called common sense, in one of the significations of this term. 

The second class of examples of the process of induction is 
furnished by the discoveries of science. The inductions of 
common life are in one sense discoveries, but the indications 
are so readily interpreted and the inferences are derived with so 
great unanimity and universality, that the intellectual process 
(or processes) by w T hich they are made, attracts little attention, 
and is, therefore, not readily analyzed. But when some new 
and wonderful agent in nature is brought to light, or some new 
law of its acting is established, and especially when the power or 
law is applied to some brilliant or useful result, we inquire 
with the greatest interest, How came the discoverer to think of 
that? How did he satisfy himself that what he thought was 
true ? In such cases we are more likely to find answers to our 
questions, inasmuch as the steps of the process have often been 
slowly made, and the considerations which have led to them 
can be distinctly reproduced. 

We select, first of all, the brilliant discovery by Franklin of 
the identity of lightning with electricity. With the electrical 
agent, or, as it was called in his time, the electric fluid, Franklin 
was entirely familiar. He was so far master of the methods c/ 
developing it in sufficient quantity or intensity, as to be able to 
produce its ordinary and obvious phenomena, as well as to ex- 
hibit phenomena that had previously been unknown. He had 



§ 235. INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 395 

the electrical machine and the Leyden jar, and could produce 
at pleasure the electrical light, and the report following the con- 
nection of bodies in opposite electrical conditions. With these, 
then somewhat novel phenomena, he had become entirely 
familiar in observation and thought ; as familiar as men in 
common life are with the aspect or form of a fruit, or with the 
expression of a gentle or vicious animal. He had also closely 
observed the phenomena of lightning, and had noticed simi- 
larities which had never been thought of before. The wave-like 
sheet and the zig-zag line and the loud report were seen to re- 
semble the less impressive phenomena of the machine and the 
Leyden jar ; and it occurred to his thoughts that the similarity 
of the phenomena indicated a common agent or power as their 
cause. This suggestion was strengthened by the thought, that 
clouds might be to clouds, or clouds to the earth, as the opposite 
surfaces of the Leyden jar. The mere observation of simi- 
larities like these might have satisfied the mind of Franklin, 
that the power or fluid in the heavens must be the same with 
that which could be accumulated by the machine from the 
earth. When at last he succeeded in bringing the power in 
question to affect a small quantity of matter, when he made it 
to run along an insulated kite-string, to emit a spark, to charge 
a Leyden jar — in short, to exhibit not only similar but the same 
indications with machine electricity, the induction could no 
longer be doubted. The decisive experiment proved the correct- 
ness of his thought. 

Dr. Black was led to the discovery of carbonic acid gas, by 
observing that caustic lime increased in weight when changed 
into common lime, and by inferring that this weight must be 
derived from some agent in the atmosphere. This suggested 
the thought that the other alkalies, being like caustic lime 
in other properties, were like it also in this. The experiment 
was tried, and the suggestion was found to be correct. This put 
him upon the inquiry what the agent was which entered into 
combination with all these substances. The inquiry resulted in 
the separation of carbonic acid gas as a newly-discovered agent, 
and the determination of its properties and laws. 

Dalton is said to have discovered the law that chemical com- 
binations are effected by the union of their constituent elements 



396 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §235, 

in fixed proportions; and that, when a larger portion of an 
agent, as oxygen, enters into such a combination, it is invariably 
a multiple of a smaller. He was led to this by the knowledge 
that, in some cases, a combination in such proportions had in fact 
been observed. Being a teacher of mathematics and accustomed 
to mathematical relations, he generalized the result of a few 
chance observations into a universal law ; it " being irresistibly 
recommended by the clearness and simplicity which the notion 
possessed." 

One of the most instructive instances of modern discovery, is 
that achieved by Sir Humphrey Davy, of the metallic bases of the 
alkaline earths. The similarity in appearance and in many 
chemical properties between such alkalies as potash, soda, and 
lime, and the clearly identified oxyds of metals, had led to the 
suggestion, that they were similar in chemical constitution — i. e., 
that they all were oxyds of metals. But the metals believed in 
do not exist in nature in a separate state, nor had they ever been 
exhibited in separate form by any agent of decomposition hith- 
erto employed. The suggestion that there were such metals, and 
that they might be evolved, was confirmed by all the indications 
required as evidence, except their actual production. The ap- 
plication of the galvanic battery to chemical decomposition, and 
the triumphant success which had attended its use, led Davy to 
try it upon the hitherto intractable and irreducible potash. 
Under the solvent power of this wondrous agent, the knot which 
had never before been unloosed was in an instant untied. At 
the magic touch of this new instrument, the little globe of the 
newly-discovered metal leaped into view, and the happy sugges- 
tion was confirmed and accepted as an undoubted fact. It 
scarcely needed an experiment to convince the sagacious inter- 
preter, that similar metals were encrusted within common lime 
and soda. The discoverer was almost as certain before as after 
the battery was applied, that calcium and sodium would in fact 
be evolved. 

In the last series of discoveries we notice the following order 
and progress of thought and experiment. First, the oxyds of 
metals were observed to be like the alkalies in certain important 
properties. But the metallic oxyds were known to be produced 
by chemical changes ; copper, iron, etc., constantly undergoing 



§ 235. INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 397 

this process before our eyes. The two substances being alike in 
certain particulars, it was conjectured that they were alike in 
others. If pure potassium could have been found in a sepa- 
rate state, the readiest way to determine the point would have 
been to oxydize the metal and see whether the result would 
be potash. The next thing was to cfe-oxydize it. This was ac^ 
complished by the agency of galvanism. The fact that galvanic 
agency could decompose chemical compounds so intractable, 
suggested that possibly there were none which it could not over- 
come. If this were so, it would follow, that the force which held 
them in union, must be electric. This was established by its ap- 
propriate evidence, and is called by Whewell, " the highest gen- 
eralization at which chemical philosophers have yet arrived." 
Hist Inductive Sciences, B. xiv. c. 10. The mental process is 
precisely that which is common to every case of Induction. Cer- 
tain objects are seen to be alike in certain properties or laws. It 
is believed or judged that similarity in these particulars indi- 
cates likeness in others. Potash is like iron-rust in certain re- 
spects ; therefore it is like iron-rust in being the oxyd of a metal. 
All chemical compounds are strikingly alike in certain parti- 
culars. Certain of these are separable by the electric force; 
therefore all are separable by this agency. But if separable 
by it, they are held in union by the same force. 

From discoveries of this kind we pass to those in astronomical 
physics — to the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and 
Nevdon. 

Copernicus began by discovering, as it is said, the heliocentric 
theory of the solar system. The way in which he was led to 
adopt and defend it, is described by himself. He had found in 
ancient authors, accounts of Philolaus and others who had 
asserted the motion of the earth. "Then I began to meditate 
concerning the motion of the earth ; and though it appeared an 
absurd opinion, yet, since I knew that in previous times others 
had been allowed the privilege of feigning what circles they chose 
in order to explain the phenomena, I conceived that I also might 
take the liberty of trying whether, on the supposition of the 
earth's motion, it was possible to find better explanations than 
the ancient ones of the revolution of the celestial orbs." 

" Having then assumed the motions of the celestial orbs which 



398 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §235, 

are hereafter explained, by laborious and long observation I at 
length found that, if the motions of the other planets be com- 
pared with the revolution of the earth, not only their phenomena 
follow from the supposition, but also that the several orbs and 
the whole system are so connected in order and magnitude, that 
no one part can be transposed without disturbing the rest, and 
introducing confusion into the universe." 

In 1609 Galileo constructed his telescope, and very soon dis- 
covered the satellites of Jupiter. This at once confirmed the 
Copernican theory, by opening before the eyes of men another 
system subordinate to the solar, of heavenly bodies revolving 
about their primaries, thus giving an analogon of the greater. 
The subsequent discovery by the same instrument of the phases 
of Venus, at once confirmed the new theory of the revolution of 
the planets about the sun, and answered an objection against it 
by explaining why Venus did not appear larger when nearer 
the beholder. 

Copernicus furnished the suggestion, by reflecting on the known 
fact, that the apparent places of objects may be accounted for by 
the motion of one or both, and that the simplest solution or theory 
was to be preferred. Galileo, by his telescope, prepared the way for 
the experiment, by enabling observers, in a certain sense, to observe 
for themselves whether it was the sun or the earth which moved. 

Kepler prepared the way for the discoveries of Newton, by his 
determination of the orbits of some of the planets, and the law 
of their motions. Newton had been himself familiar with the 
law by which, in obedience to terrestrial gravity, bodies fall to 
the earth's surface. The first thought which led to the extension 
of this agent to the celestial bodies occurred to him in 1666. "As 
he sat alone in a garden, he fell into a speculation on the power 
of gravity: that, as this power is not found sensibly diminished at 
the remotest distance from the centre of the earth to which we 
can rise, neither at the tops of the loftiest buildings, nor even on 
the summits of the highest mountains, it appeared to him reason- 
able to conclude that this power must extend much further than 
Was usually thought. ' Why not as high as the moon ?' said he 
to himself; 'and, if so, her motion must be influenced by it; 
perhaps she is retained in her orbit thereby.' " Upon this sug- 
gestion, he proceeded to the calculation of the deflection of the 



§ 235. INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 399 

moon from a tangent to its orbit in a single second ; it being 
assumed that the moon was at the distance from the earth which 
was then received. The result disappointed him ; for he found 
that this deflection would be thirteen feet, which did not cor- 
respond with that required by the supposition that gravity 
deflected it. He laid his calculation aside. The subsequent 
discovery that the course described by a falling body is an ellipse, 
and that the distance of the moon from the earth could be 
correctly ascertained, enabled him to accept his theory on the 
ground that it coincided with actual fact. The distance of the 
moon had previously been computed on an assumed but mistaken 
diameter of the earth. A more accurate measurement of a 
degree upon the earth's surface led to a correction of the distance 
of the moon, and Newton's theory was henceforward accepted as 
a demonstrated truth. He first conjectured that the extension 
of a known force from the earth to the heavens, is possible and 
rational. He asks, "if so'* "what then?" following out his in- 
duction by a mathematical deduction. He then, by other mathe- 
matical calculations decisively tested this deduction, and the 
conjectured agent was established as a vera causa, and its laws 
were carefully computed ; the true theory of the heavenly bodies 
was forever settled. 

The examples cited are sufficient to illustrate the nature of the 
inductive process. They have been taken from the physical 
sciences, not because these differ essentially from those which 
concern moral and political subjects, but because they illustrate 
more strikingly the steps of induction. The objects with which 
they are concerned are more interesting to the majority of men. 
The effects of discoveries in them are more obvious. The experi- 
ments and observations which have led to them are more 
brilJiant and startling. Many of their results are permanently 
fixed in the arts of life, both useful and ornamental. Some of 
them are continually brought to our thoughts by engines and 
instruments which materially contribute to the convenience and 
comfort of man. The telescope, the prism, the quadrant, the 
hydraulic press, the steam engine, the galvanic battery, are all 
permanent memorials of what these processes have wrought, and 
they prompt to eager inquiries after the operations by which they 
were first constructed in thought. 






400 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §236. 

The attentive consideration of these examples proves that 
induction in science is substantially the same process with in- 
duction in common life — that in both cases it is a process of in- 
terpreting indications. 

§ 236. This assertion prompts the inquiries, Why then 
SStionaofVS- are the processes of common induction so easy and those 

encemorediffi- Qf ^^ gQ difficult ? Why ig ^ ^grVS to COm- 

mon sense so easily and rapidly made in the infancy 
and childhood of the individual, and why have the advances of 
science been so difficult ? Why so long delayed ? — why, even 
now, is it true that in respect to so many branches of knowledge 
the race is yet in its infancy ? To these questions the following 
answers can be given. 

We notice First: that in science, the properties observed, — 
which are the indicia or indicators of others, — are less obtrusive 
than those used in common life, and are often far removed from 
common observation. To be apprehended even, they require 
closer attention than men in common life are able to give. 

Many of these properties can only be apprehended by some 
nicely constructed aid to the powers of sense, or some costly and 
ingeniously devised apparatus ; to the production of which spe- 
cial inventive sagacity is required, which sagacity itself must 
be the fruit of many men or generations which have gone 
before. 

Second : The inductions of common life are founded on super- 
ficial and partly inaccurate observations. Those of science rest 
upon the sharpest analysis. The common observer observes facts 
and detects principles in regard to things or powers in the gross, 
both as they are combined and operated in nature. He does 
not go far beyond the things and phenomena which the common 
necessities of life require men to distinguish. The scientific ob- 
server continually aims to detect and separate, by a refined and 
acute analysis, powers and agents which are never divided except 
by artificial appliances, — and some of which are never parted 
even by these. Hence the experiments of common sense and the 
experiments of science, are very different. 

Third: Many of the inductions in science are far more 
general and comprehensive than the inductions of common 
life. Many of the subtle agents or laws which science detects, 



§ 236. INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 401 

are far more general and extensive than those which observation 
discerns. 

Consequently they furnish the grounds for more varied induc- 
tions. They can be applied to explain a greater number of indivi- 
dual phenomena. They suggest very many possible theories. They 
incite to a manifold greater number of experiments. When any 
such comprehensive power or attribute is established, it can be 
used in a large number of deductions. 

Fourth : One of the distinguishing peculiarities of scientific in- 
ductions is found in the circumstance that they are so widely and 
severely mathematical. 

The relations of space and number are capable of being af- 
firmed of every material agent, and hence when any one is 
found to exist and act according to such relations, we have af; 
once the occasion and means of a very comprehensive generali- 
zation. The language of mathematics is the most precise and in- 
telligible, the most easily communicated, and the most readily un- 
derstood of all language. The tests of measure, weight, and 
quantity are the most easily applied of all tests. The sciences 
of space and number are also capable of the clearest, the most 
convincing, and the most fruitful of deductions, and hence so far 
as they can be legitimately applied, they can most readily test 
experiments and record their results. 

Fifth: Science is necessarily more a growth than any other 
species of knowledge. One discovery not only in fact prepares 
the way for another in the actual history and order of man's at- 
tainments, but by the necessary dependence of one discovered 
law or agent upon another. The discovery of the law of uni- 
versal gravitation was in the nature of the case impossible with- 
out the aid of pure Geometry, Algebra, the Calculus, and the laws 
of Mechanics. Optics, with the use and the invention of the 
telescope, had been in part developed before and in part perfected 
by Newton, before they could be applied by him to this particular 
discovery. In almost every great induction, many of the sci- 
ences and arts are laid under contribution. All the previous 
steps are presupposed when a single forward step is to be taken. 

This is true only to a very limited degree of the inductions of 
common life. The well-qualified and well-trained man can with 
no great difficulty develop of himself much that the race has 









402 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 236. 

gained by common sense and observation, or can appropriate 
and master it with ease. The common sense of to-day in a re- 
fined and educated community in England or America readily 
appropriates the products which the common sense and experi- 
ence of another generation had matured and preserved in lan- 
guage, traditions, manners and institutions. For all these are 
taken up by the mind with marvellous ease, and require but little 
of that discipline, which the mastery of the circle of those sci- 
ences which are necessary for success, imposes upon the dis- 
coverer. The difference is slight between the common sense 
of Socrates and the common sense of the honest and independ- 
ent observer of the nineteenth century, compared with the 
immense disparity in the amount of positive knowledge possessed 
by the student of Physics in Socrates' time and in our own. 

These considerations we think sufficiently explain the differ- 
ences which exist between the inductions of science and those of 
common life, and establish the truth that the process is sub- 
stantially the same in each. These differences are fully accounted 
for by the difference in the subject-matter, without requiring any 
difference in the process of interpreting them. 

Induction in both combines an accurate observation of pro- 
perties and a sagacious interpretation of what they indicate. But 
precisely here arises the most interesting and vital of questions, 
" On what ground or by what evidence do we proceed from the 
known to the unknown ?" We can safely reply, it is not upon 
the ground of simple experience. For a long time it was be- 
lieved that all swans are white, for the reason that no swan of 
any other color had been observed or heard of. " Mankind were 
wrong," says J. S. Mill, " in concluding that all swans are white : 
are we also wrong when we conclude that all men's heads grow 
above their shoulders and never below, in spite of the conflicting 
testimony of the naturalist Pliny ? We have no doubt what is 
the correct answer to this question. But why are not men wrong 
in rejecting such a story, and in believing with assured confi- 
dence, that wherever men exist, their heads are not beneath their 
shoulders? Why is a single instance, in some cases, sufficient 
for a complete induction, while in others, myriads of concumng 
instances, without a single exception known or presumed, go 
such a very little way towards establishing an universal propo- 



§ 237. INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 40^j 

sition ? Whoever can answer this question knows more of the 
philosophy of logic than the wisest of the ancients, and has 
solved the great problem of induction." Logic, B. iii. c. 3. 

If we seek to answer this question, we say it is more credible^ 
or reasonable to believe that swans should vary in color than 
that men should vary so greatly in form. But why is it more 
credible? Some would deem it sufficient to reply that in 
most species of animals, individuals which are alike in every 
other respect differ in color, — in other words, that it is a 
generally observed law that color is very variable, while some 
constant outline or type of form is uniformly observed in every 
species, or at least has never admitted a deviation so monstrous 
as would be implied in having the head beneath the shoulders. 
This would be Mill's answer to his own question. But this does 
not fully explain our confident assurance that it is altogether 
incredible that a species of men should be so constructed. We 
cannot admit the supposition for a moment, for the decisive 
reason that men so formed could not perform the functions of 
men with any convenience or success ; that such a form would 
offend both the eye and the mind, and would be entirely incom- 
patible with the ideal of beauty and convenience to which we 
assume that nature would certainly conform. 

Considerations of convenience and of adaptation, and even of 
beauty and grace, go far in such a case toward deciding the question. 
They give that weight and force to those " single instances which 
in some cases are sufficient for a complete induction," and take away 
all force from the " myriads of concurring instances " in other 
directions. It must be on the ground of such relations assumed 
a priori to be true of the whole universe of being and to hold 
good of its properties, powers, and laws, that we proceed in all 
our judgments of induction. These direct the mind in inter- 
preting the indications furnished by observation. These prompt 
to the questions which we ask of nature in our experiments. 
These suggest the hypotheses by which we account for the phe- 
nomena. These confirm all the theories which we finally accept 
as true. 

§ 237. We inquire next, what are some of the The a priori 
truths or affirmations which the mind assumes in all J^SS^d i» 
its inductions, and by which it regulates its inquiries ducti 



tion 



404 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§237. 



into the properties and laws of the physical universe? We 
call these in the present stage of our discussion assumptions. 
We do not by this imply that they are not valid and true : they 
are logically necessary to the inductive process when it is analyzed. 
We need not here inquire whether they are all ultimate and 
original to the mind. It is enough for our purpose to ascertain, 
that they are a priori in relation to the ordinary processes . of 
inductive inquiry. Some of them are as follows : 

(1.) All the objects with which the mind concerns itself in iU 
inductions, are known as substances and attributes. It is with the 
properties or attributes of matter and mind, as exhibited through 
phenomena, that these inquiries are exclusively occupied, whether 
they are known as qualities, powers, or relations. Beings are 
known to the philosopher by their attributes or relations ; it is 
by these, that they are distinguished, classified, and named. 

(2.) Induction assumes and implies the reality of the causative 
energy, as necessary to explain the origination of every begun 
existence, and of all occurring phenomena. Whether it investi- 
gates the powers of nature or the laws of nature, it proceeds 
upon this as a necessary assumption. A power in any being or 
agent is its capacity to produce , an effect under appropriate con- 
ditions and according to definite laws. The power of heat to 
expand metals, of a burning body to explode gunpowder, of 
oxygen to corrode metals, of the soul to know objects knowabie, 
and to care for objects desirable; all express and suppose a 
single common relation, viz., the relation of an energy thai is 
causative of effects. 

That this relation is real, is assumed and implied in all our 
investigations into the unknown. This is true, if our inquiries 
respect the ascertainment of the unknown originator of a known 
effect, and result in the discovery of such elements as oxygen or 
hydrogen, or of such metals as potassium and aluminium, or of 
such agents as gravitation and electricity ; or if we are still on the 
quest, and the cause or power sought for is not yet evolved. The 
same is true if our inquiries are directed to the determination of 
the laivs or the precise conditions under which an ascertained 
cause produces a given effect, or to the more definite statement of 
the relations — mathematical or otherwise — under which these 
conditions vary with a varying effect, as in the determination of 



§' 237. INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 405 

the laws of gravitation, of chemical affinity, or of mental per- 
ception, association, desire, and volition. 

(3.) Time and Space, with the relations which they hold to ex- 
tended objects and succeeding events, are also assumed in induc- 
tion. So also is the possibility of the mathematical constructions 
which are conditioned by Time and Space ; in other words, the 
reality and nature of geometrical and arithmetical quantities, 
their relations to one another and their varied applications to 
concrete objects and phenomena. These are not only assumed, 
they are put in the fore-front of the whole scheme of modern 
inductive philosophy. The processes of mathematical investi- 
gation are made the models for all scientific investigation. Their 
results are the instruments of measuring all physical forces and 
of formulating all physical laws. 

Gravitation was scarcely determined to be a force, till its 
mathematical relations were expressed in the law that it is a 
force varying inversely as the square of the distance. The laws 
of falling or projected bodies are expressed by means of the geo- 
metric curves in which they move, and by the numbers which 
describe their velocity. The pressure and flow of fluids are re- 
duced to mathematical expressions. Chemical affinity is com- 
prehended under the wide-reaching principle that different ele- 
ments unite in definite numerical proportions, which has 
furnished the foundation for modern chemical symbolization. 
The entire theory of astronomy is a combination of mechanics 
and applied geometry. Modern researches respecting light, 
electricity, and heat, have dared to propound the theory that all 
these are different modes of motion, the rate of whose vibrations 
determines these subtle and marvellously potent phenomena. 
They have at least demonstrated that the varying phenomena of 
these so-called forces or agents are attended by motions that can be 
made the test of their presence and the measure of their intensity. 

So extensively have mathematical relations been applied in 
modern induction, that it has been gravely urged on the one 
hand that spiritual phenomena and forces can in no way come 
under the inquiries of science, because, forsooth, they cannot be 
subjected to mathematical relations, and, on the other, that they 
can and must be subjected to these relations in order that any 
science of spirit may exist 



406 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§237. 



(4.) Induction assumes that properties and laws which are 
known, indicate and signify other powers and laws ; that in these 
indications nature is honest and open in her dealings with man ; 
in other words, that she is consistent with herself, or uniform in 
her methods of revealing or suggesting what man is prompted 
to interpret or explain. For example, we judge that a certain 
form or appearance in a fruit indicates a certain flavor ; that a 
particular aspect of stem and branches signifies a habit of leaf 
and fruit ; that a given expression of countenance betokens a 
peculiar disposition or temper in man or beast ; that striking 
similarities of attributes in metals indicate a similar capacity 
to be oxydized ; that obvious and pervading similarities in phe- 
nomena prove that electricity in the earth is the same agent as 
the cause of lightning in the heavens ; that the same power 
which is pervasive enough to affect bodies near the earth, is pro- 
bably or at least possibly — in part or. solely — the power which 
holds the moon in its changing path around the earth. 

It is implied in the honesty or, which is equivalent, in the 
significance or interpretability of nature that she is also uniform, 
or self-consistent with herself from time to time ; or in other 
words, that her laws and methods are permanent. 

In other words, induction requires that we assume that nature 
is constant and uniform in her agencies, operations, and laws ; 
also in her methods of making these known to the mind of the 
inquirer into her secrets. 

It might here be asked, Why do we believe this to be true ? Is 
the assumption groundless and ultimate, or is it founded upon 
some reason? It might be said that otherwise we could not 
know or interpret nature at all : If nature were not thus honest 
and uniform, the human mind could have no knowledge except 
of individual things, or the knowledge acquired to-day could not 
be relied on for to-morrow. But it might still be inquired, What 
necessity is there that we know and generalize ? or more broadly, 
By what right do we presume that the objective universe is so 
constructed that the human mind may know it ? We say, " If 
it were not so, it would not be adapted to the mind: The 
mind would feel impulses and use activities which would find no 
corresponding objects: It would be impelled to modes of action 
in generalizing, interpreting, in explaining and forecasting, to 



§ 237. INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 40? 

which tnere would be no corresponding realities. If this answer 
is appropriate or valid, it suggests another assumption, viz. : 

(5.) Nature adapts objects and powers to certain ends. In 
other words, physical forces are regulated and controlled by 
design. The application already made shows that this principle 
is assumed. This will be still more clearly manifest from the 
examples previously cited. When Copernicus proposed to himself 
to try whether, on the supposition of the earth's motion, it was 
possible to find a better explanation of the revolutions of the celes- 
tial orbs than those currently received from the ancients, we ask 
what he would conceive to be a better explanation, and find an 
answer to our own question, in the reasons which led him to 
prefer his own. These reasons were, that this theory supposed 
greater simplicity and symmetry in the mechanism of the 
heavens, than the older theory furnished. But why is a neater 
and more symmetrical theory to be preferred? Because it is 
better adapted to satisfy the mind of man, — because this mind 
thus reflects: Were I to provide for the motions and appearances 
of the heavenly bodies, with given materials, viz., force, motion, 
etc., I should hold and move these bodies by the simplest possi- 
ble arrangement of motions, and the most economical disposi- 
tion of forces. 

Newton, reflecting on the force of gravity, inquires within 
himself, " Why may not the force which extends beyond the tops 
of the highest mountains also extend as far as the moon, and 
why may she not be retained in her orbit thereby ?" His own 
question implied the answer : " If this single force, known to 
exist, would explain the movements of the solar system, it is 
more rational to believe that this force actually exists than to 
adopt any other explanation." This involves the assumption of 
a wise adaptation to the designed effects of the force or forces 
conceived to be at command. It is by a reference to the same 
assumption that we explain the general laws of philosophizing 
which Newton has laid down. The rule that real and sufficient 
causes of phenomena are to be taken to explain phenomena, 
whether it is or is not interpreted as coming under the more 
general law of parsimony, is only an enunciation of the truth that 
if an element, or force, already known to exist, can be employed 
to evolve, produce, or accomplish an effect, no new force will bo 



408 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



238. 



provided or is to be supposed. If we ask upon what this as- 
sumption rests, we reply, that any other arrangement would be 
bad economy — an unwise adaptation of means to ends. 

Underlying all inductive inquiry, we find the assumption of a 
twofold adaptation in nature ; first, of the several parts or forces 
to one another, and second, of the indications of nature to the 
mind that interprets them. But in assuming that nature thus 
adapts her forces to ends and also that the human mind is com- 
petent to discern these ends and to interpret the skill and 
success of nature in accomplishing them, we imply — 

(6.) That the human intellect in induction, judges the con- 
stitution and operations of nature by referring to what it would 
itself consider to be rational and wise. In other words, induc- 
tion assumes that the rational methods of the divine and human 
intellect are similar, and that the human intellect is therefore 
capable of judging of the principles and aims by which the uni- 
verse was constructed and its laws can be known. More briefly 
expressed, Induction is only possible on the assumption that the 
intellect of man is a reflex of the Divine Intellect; or that man is 
made in the image of God. 

§ 238. The so-called rules or methods of induction 
of induction. 68 are three : The method of agreement, the method of 
difference, and the method of concomitant variations. 
They are briefly stated as follows: (1.) If in all cases of an 
effect or phenomenon, one condition is uniformly present, that is 
the cause or includes the cause of such a phenomenon or effect. 
(2.) If, in every instance in which an effect does occur, one single 
condition is present, which is uniformly absent whenever such 
effect does not occur, this constantly present or absent condition 
is presumed to be its cause. (3.) If, whenever an effect or phe- 
nomenon is marked with peculiar energy, any condition varies 
with proportional intensity, this varying condition is the cause 
of such an effect. 

Properly conceived, these are rules for testing or proving in- 
ductions, or rules for experiment : they cast no light upon that 
which is most essential in the inductive process. An experiment 
is a nice analysis or observation, made for an express design. 
Analysis, i. e., discriminating attention, is the condition of all 
obscrvyiion of qualities and causes. It begins with sensible per- 



§ 239. INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 409 

ception, and without it, generalization and classification are im- 
possible. The analysis used in induction is peculiar only in 
being directed to those properties and laws which are less ob- 
vious, and often guides to a special search for those which the 
senses cannot directly detect, but which the mind divines. 

The rules for this search are not different in fact from those 
which the simpler inductions of common sense and of common 
life require and employ. It is only because the relations upon 
which they are employed are less obvious, and the discriminations 
are more difficult, that these rules need to be distinctly con- 
sidered and formally applied, and that the formal recognition of 
them by Bacon and Newton contributed so largely to the advance 
of modern science. 

§ 239. Their design is to test a theory, hypothesis, or ^ f h ® ^JjJJaK 
suggestion which the mind has already formed. The hypothesis and 

« /,/ •> discovery. 

experimenter upon nature must come to her with his 
question formed and the answer anticipated, before he applies the 
methods of agreement and difference. Lord Bacon says abund- 
antly that it is the prudens quazstio, or the wisely-suggested 
question, which directs the experiment to an anticipated result, 
and which very often confidently predicts the result before it is 
actually established or proved. 

If now, the question suggests and guides the experiment, and 
if the anticipation predicts the fulfillment, we ask, What suggests 
the question f What are the grounds on which, or the methods 
by which the mind forms its hypothesis t When for example, 
Newton anticipated in thought the solution of the motions of the 
solar system by gravity, or Davy believed that he could bring 
out from the brown and earthy potash the brilliant potassium, 
what were the grounds upon which, and the rules after which, 
their minds proceeded ? The question may be more generally 
stated : What are the conditions of successful invention and dis- 
covery f 

To this question many would reply, ' No answer can be given. 
The power to read the secrets of nature is a gift of nature. It 
can be improved by exercise ; it can be formed and developed 
into tact and skill; but what are the methods by which exercise 
can form or mature it, is qaite beyond the reach or power of 
analysis to trace out or describe/ There is some truth in this 
18 



410 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §239. 

view, though not to the full extent of this representation. 
Analysis can at least separate and describe the essential elements 
of the process, and can so far describe the conditions of successful 
achievement. 

(1.) The first condition is, that the attention be directed to that 
class of objects and powers already known, which are to indicate 
and suggest the unknown. The discoveries of science are founded 
upon powers and relations which are overlooked by the great 
majority even of cultivated men. The sagacity which we seek 
to explain, is always exercised in respect to that subject-matter 
to which the discoverer has given special attention, and with the 
peculiarities of which he has become specially familiar. The 
chemical discoverer is a chemist. The discoverer in physics is 
a student of physics. As we have already observed, Franklin 
had become familiarly acquainted with electricity and lightning, 
by long-continued attention to the phenomena of both, before he 
thought of their identity. It was not till Newton had meditated 
long and frequently on the forces of the universe, that he was iu 
a condition in which it was possible for him to anticipate the 
theory of universal gravitation. Davy must, of necessity, have 
been familiar with all the chemical facts already ascertained, in 
order to conjecture the unknown base of potash. It is plain, that 
if the philosopher is to interpret indications, he must first observe 
and attend to them. 

(2.) It is implied in attention to objects that their relations 
should be carefully regarded. For the purposes of knowledge, 
and especially of science, relations are all-important. The rela- 
tions most important to science are those of likeuess or unlike- 
ness leading to classification, the relations of number and magni- 
tude which are the conditions of mensuration, the relations of 
causation and design which are essential to reasoning. 

In respect to the power of apprehending relations with facility 
and success, men differ greatly. In simple judgments of com- 
parison, one man discerns similar and dissimilar qualities when 
another can discern neither likeness nor difference. Likenesses 
and unlikenesses of form are likewise detected by the quick eye 
of one man, which can scarcely be made apparent to the slower 
and less acute observation of another. To whatever causes these 
differences of power may be ascribed, whether to a finer sensuou* 



§ 239. INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 411 

organization, or a more refined and discerning spiritual nature, 
the fact cannot be doubted that they exist. They are, in part to 
be ascribed to training and opportunities, in part to the interest 
or necessity which enforces the application and the energetic 
action of the powers, and, in part, to original aptitudes and 
capacities. 

(3.) The next condition of success is an acquired familiarity 
with the special modes of indicating the unknown which are 
followed in any special sphere of observation or scientific inquiry. 
The florist marks indications in flowers which are unmeaning to 
other persons, and learns to connect them with what they indi- 
cate. The cultivator of fruits gains the same sagacity with 
fruit?. The sportsman alone learns by experience to understand 
the significance of certain actions of his game. The keen and 
discerning eye in every department is trained by what it is ac- 
customed tOj and gains some definite impressions in respect to the 
methods of nature in accomplishing her objects, and in indicating 
her powers and laws. The devotee of any special science soon 
gains a familiarity with the movements of nature within his own 
sphere. He enters, so to speak, into her spirit. 

The literal import of this language is as follows : The physicist 
and chemist, the botanist and geologist, learn by degrees that 
in their several spheres certain properties are far more pre- 
valent than others ; that they are very often present and ma- 
nifest; that certain combinations of elements and agencies are, 
so to speak, favorites with nature. Certain powers are very 
limited in their application, and of course are manifest in a smaller 
number of phenomena. Others show themselves in a great 
variety of existences, and explain a great number of phenomena. 
Just as far as discovery or experience proceed, just so far do they 
mark off certain powers and laws as more, and others as less 
extensive. This is the simple result of experience often repeated 
in respect to a sufficient variety of cases ; this experience matures 
into familiarity with what may be called the preferences, or 
favorite methods, according to which nature conducts her pro- 
cesses and manifests her powers. 

(4.) The next step towards discovery is the use of the construct- 
ive imagination. All the steps previously considered are acts of 
experience. The act now considered is an act of mental con* 



412 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



239. 



struction or combination. It relates to facts as supposed, 01 
conceived to be possible or probable by the mind. The objects, 
relations, and methods of nature being all mastered by quick and 
attentive observation, must be marshalled by the memory and 
placed at the service of the imagination to be re-arranged and 
re-combined. 

Let a complex substance be presented for that analysis in 
thought which precedes the test of experiment : or let some un- 
explained phenomenon be proposed to be accounted for. The 
first effort is to present to the imagination every known element 
or agent, and to ask which is more likely to be the one which we 
require. Or if none that are known will meet the exigency, 
what unknown element or agent — and acting by what laws — may 
be supposed to solve the problem ? 

To be able to answer these questions the memory must be 
quick to suggest all the powers and agents that are known, in all 
their known relations. The presence or absence of a single 
essential fact may determine the question whether a discovery 
shall or shall not be made. 

It is not enough, however, that the memory suggests all that 
she has gathered, unless the imagination reconstructs and recom- 
bines in relations as yet untried and unknown. The imagination 
takes all the materials at its command, all the powers and agents 
which are known to exist, with their laws and relations, and con- 
nects them in new constructions. It makes these combinations 
not to amuse or illustrate, not to convince, instruct, or to per- 
suade, but simply to conjecture what is best adapted to meet the 
exigency. 

What is called accident, too, very often combines with 
memory and the imagination, and, at times, determines a 
great discovery in science, or a grand invention in the arts. 
The Marquis of Worcester happens to see the rising and falling 
of the cover of a tea-kettle, and forthwith he commences a course 
of speculation in respect to the laws of the agent which furnished 
this force ; and thus sets in motion the course of discovery which 
has given to science and art steam power with all its applications. 
But thousands and tens of thousands of men had observed the 
same phenomenon which attracted the attention and excited the 
inquiries of the Marquis of Worcester. His previous knowledge 



§ 240. INDUCTIVE REASONING OR INDUCTION. 413 

of science and his familiar acquaintance with scientific relations 
alone enabled him to turn his knowledge to the use of discovery. 
The promptness and vigor with which the associative faculty- 
avails itself of such an incident decide the question whether it 
shall be received as a productive seed or whether it shall fall 
upon the barren rock. 

The curiosity of the investigator is a most important condition 
of failure or success, for it determines whether or not the intel- 
lect shall be effectively applied to the objects and relations which 
alone prepare the way for new knowledge. Perseverance and 
tenacity hold the attention and the memory to the question 
which may have been started ; they task the memory to give up 
all its past acquisitions, and stimulate the imagination to perseve- 
rance in its efforts to reconstruct them. 

(5.) To success in induction, the power of sure and ready de- 
duction is also essential. The real nature and reach of any 
theory which is suggested by the memory or constructed by the 
imagination, cannot be understood until the most important con- 
sequences and applications are derived from it in the form 
of conclusions. The law of gravitation was no sooner sug- 
gested to the imagination of Newton, in the question, "why 
not," and sanctioned by the approving answer, " it is very 
probably true ;" than the additional thought, " if so, what follows" 
led him to an act of deduction. 

The power of wide-reaching, sure and rapid deduction, is an 
important element in the qualifications of the successful dis- 
coverer. A severe training in the discipline of the Syllogistic 
Logic, and the linked demonstrations of Geometry, as also in the 
subtle calculations of Numbers, is an admirable if not an essen- 
tial preparation for success in discovery. 

(6.) The conditions previously described being all fulfilled, 
the reason then judges which of all the various possible supposi- 
tions which the imagination suggests, gives the most satisfactory 
solution and is most probably true. 

§ 240. But by what standard ? What are the grounds J he choic T * be - 

u J ° tween hypo 

and tests of probability ? The history of Induction theses - 
shows that these differ in different cases. Sometimes the 
known existence of some agent or law, or its very extensive pre- 
valence in the economy of nature, is the deciding circumstance in 



414 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 240. 

its favor. We always assume that nature works the most diverse 
effects by the fewest possible elements or forces. Sometimes it is 
what is loosely termed analogy. 

But analogy and the want of it pertain to very different qualities 1 
and relations ; sometimes to those which affect the senses inline* 
diately, as the eye and the touch, sometimes to those which are 
more remote from direct apprehension, as to mechanical or 
chemical effects or mathematical relations. Which analogies 
shall be decisive in such cases is determined by the importance 
attached to each in the general or the special economy of nature, 
or by what is called the congruity with her methods in similar 
departments. 

In the application of these and of similar criteria the intellect 
appeals, so to speak, to itself. The interpreter of nature continu- 
ally asks himself thus : Given, certain elements, powers, and 
laws, how should I indicate them ? or how should I apply them ? 
Or, in the reverse order : Given, certain ends, effects, and phe- 
nomena, which of the known forces at command would a rational 
being employ for this or that object, if he aimed at an orderly, 
an intelligible, or a beautiful universe? Or, if no one of the 
forces known is adequate to explain the effects of phenomena, 
w T hat unknown force or element is required to account for them, 
so as best to fulfil their objects, and what must be the properties 
and what the laws of such an agent ? 

The language so often used, that man is the interpreter of 
nature, that nature has her methods, her economies, and her fa- 
vorite ways, implies that in all these judgments, there is a belief 
in the constructive or arranging processes of another mind. 

When Kepler exclaims, " God! I think thy thoughts after 
thee!" — when Agassiz catches and repeats the same sentiment, in 
asserting that all just and thorough classification is but an inter- 
pretation of the thoughts of the Creator, they simply express in 
other language the assumption on which every sagacious antici- 
pation or felicitous theory is founded, viz., that the rational 
methods of the Divine and human intellect must be the same. This 
of course, includes the assumption, without which the principles, 
maxims, and methods of the inductive philosophy have no 
meaning: and no foundation, viz., that the universe of mattei 
and mind has its ground and explanation in an intelligent origi« 



§ 241. INDUCTIVE REASONING OH INDUCTION. 415 

nator. In other words, Induction rests upon ihe assumption, — as iX 
demands for its ground, — that a personal or a thinking Deity exists. 

It follows that the most successful theorist and the most saga- 
cious questioner of nature is the man who takes the wisest views 
of her indications, by the appropriate signs of her economy in the 
use of given forces, and of her adaptation to the ends of har- 
mony, beauty, and perhaps of beneficence ; and who has been 
most accustomed to reflect upon the actual methods by which 
these various workings of nature are accomplished in varying 
cases, as in mechanical effects, chemical combinations, vital 
forces, and spiritual endowments. He is the wisest interpreter 
of nature, who through nature has entered most intimately into 
the thoughts of God. 

§241. (7.) Last of all comes the experiment to The place of 

v ■*■ experiment. 

test the theory, however sagaciously conjectured — to 
answer the question, however ingeniously proposed. Though 
we must assume that the methods of the divine and the 
human intellect are the same, yet we must concede that 
the elements and powers, the laws and methods of the universe, 
i. e., the thoughts of the Creator, can, as yet, be conjectured by 
the created intellect only to a limited extent. 

Even of the facts which have been observed and known we 
are not always sure that we have considered all in all their rela- 
tions, when our theory was constructed. We therefore bring 
the judgments founded upon these limited data to the revisal of 
the Infinite Mind. We question nature whether our thoughts 
correspond with her own. We correct the answers which we 
had devised by the decided responses which our experiments 
elicit. 

While, then, on the one hand, man, in constructing his wise 
questionings and in framing his sagacious theories, may claim a 
likeness to God ; he concedes his human limitations in submitting 
his theories to the test of experiment. Rightly conceived, every 
scientific experiment is an act ©f reverent worship. 



m 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



CHAPTER IX. 



SCIENTIFIC ARRANGEMENT. — THE SYSTEM. 



§24:1 



§ 242. We have already considered the several pro 
rangement. ar " cesses of objective or concrete thinking, and the pro- 
fower^mport. 8 ducts which they evolve. The processes are analysis; 
generalization; classification; judgment, in the two 
forms of definition and division ; and reasoning, by deduction and 
induction — giving us as their products, the concept; the class; 
the proposition ; the argument ; and the principle or law. The 
combination of these several processes and their results in a com- 
plex result or product, is scientific arrangement, and the product 
is the system. 

Scientific arrangement or method may be defined in general, 
as the gathering of individual objects into a synthetic whole, by 
any one of the analyses and generalizations of thought. When 
any number of such objects are united into such a whole, that 
whole may, in a certain sense, be called a system. This is not, 
however, the usual signification of the term. We employ it in 
this sense simply to call attention to the truth, that the process 
of classification is the beginning of systemization. This is the 
first condition or step of the synthetic process which terminates 
in the system proper. 

Inasmuch as every concept has the two relations of extent or 
content either dormant or developed, that arrangement of indivi- 
dual objects in these two directions which follows from the appli- 
cation to them of both the content and the extent of a notion is 
more properly a system. When several notions of a more or less 
comprehensive content, or a more or less widely applicable extent, 
are used to define and divide the individual objects to which they 
apply, these objects are brought into a system ; or the mind is 
said to take a systematic view of their several properties, and to 
class them as mutually related to one another. Their properties 
are seen to be more or less extensively the same ; the classes in 
which they are grouped or gathered are said to be higher 01 



§ 243. SCIENTIFIC ARRANGEMENT.— THE SYSTEM. 417 

lower, and the several classes are arranged into a hierarchy or a 
subordinated whole. 

Inasmuch, also, as every concept results from, represents, and 
may be expanded into, its propositions ; these twofold propositions 
of content and extent express, when properly arranged, the sys- 
tematic arrangement or method of the objects to which such 
propositions can be applied. 

Every concept, as well as every proposition that respectively 
defines and divides, and thus arranges and subordinates, the 
objects to which each belongs, indicates or suggests some property 
or power or law of the beings to which it is applied. Most 
name,) of things indicate that they belong to some permanent 
class, and are possessed of properties that are fixed in the designs, 
and are perpetuated by the laws of nature. The most important 
propositions of definition and division simply expand and apply 
these permanent properties and laws. 

§ 243. The more important of these properties and g stem in its 
laws are those which are discovered by induction, ap- hi s' her siguifi- 

J 7 r cance. 

plied in deduction, and verified by experiment, 
after the methods which have been explained. When so 
discovered, and applied, and established, they are used tc ex- 
plain or account for the less obvious events and phenomena in 
the universe of matter and of spirit. The properties, princi- 
ples, and laws which are thus inferred in induction, applied by 
deduction, and verified by tests of fact, — as they are respectively 
established, — serve also to define and divide the beings and events 
which they concern ; but by notions that are constituted of the more 
refined elements, and that divide beings into the more comprehen- 
sive and significant classes. Hence result scientific systems, i. e., 
systems founded on principles more profound and wide-reaching 
ihan those which direct the classifications of common life. 

It follows that scientific arrangement and systemization, — the 
concepts and terms, — are applied with pre-eminent propriety to 
Che methodical arrangement which is founded and effected by 
these more recondite properties and more extensive laws. Such 
properties and laws are said pre-eminently to explain the opera- 
tions of nature, and to enable man to predict phenomena, as well 
as to control events and results by art or skill. Such arrange- 
ment gives the system, in the pre-eminent sense, when many of 

18* 



418 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§243. 



these more subtle and significant laws and properties are arranged 
in order as higher and lower, i. e., as more and less comprehen- 
sive in import and extensive in application. 

It is important to observe that the terms scientific method 
and system may be applied to a narrower or wider range of 
beings or events, and may be founded on generalizations which 
are narrower and wider, or on inductions which are more or less 
profound. They may include a single kingdom of organic or 
inorganic existences, or may embrace all material things. They 
may define and arrange these according to the more obvious pro- 
perties and laws which are open to common observation, or may 
employ those properties which appear to hasty observation to be 
very remote, and which are reached only by the most sagacious 
conjectures, and the most skilful experiments. They may in- 
clude the domain of spirit only, or extend to the kingdoms of 
both matter and spirit, and arrange the two domains by the pro- 
perties and laws which can be established as common to the two. 

Systematic arrangement and scientific method are also freely 
applied to abstracta, or those artificial products which are the 
creations of the human intellect ; to those concepts which law, 
ethics, theology, politics, and political economy familiarly employ, 
as well as to those abstract forms and rules which grammar, logic, 
and the mathematics prescribe. But all concepts are derived 
from propositions, as their originators and vouchers. A system 
of definitions, properly subordinated and derived, is therefore essen- 
tial to every scientific system of concepts, terms, rules, and prin- 
ciples, and should always be justified by the concrete examples 
and existing beings from which the concepts are derived, and by 
which the principles are tested. 



■ , 



§ 244. THE INTUITIONS DEFINED AND ENUMERATED. 419 



PART fourth; 

INTUITION. — THE CATEGORIES. — FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

CHAPTER L 

THE INTUITIONS DEFINED AND ENUMERATED. 

§ 244. Thus far we have inquired what are the and T S pe C „ r ia" ? ™ 
processes and products of knowledge, when the know- 2J§f eB of OUI 
ing power is employed in the form of direct activity. 

We are now to turn the power in upon itself; to inquire 
what are the relations which it necessarily assumes in all those 
operations. In doing this we enter upon the last and highest 
stage of our inquiries — which is properly called the critical 
or the speculative. It is critical because it analyzes these opera- 
tions for the purpose of testing their trustworthiness. It is 
speculative because it aims to find the ultimate elements and 
foundations of all science and all knowledge. 

This critical analysis of the power of knowledge is the last 
and highest form of the mind's activity, because it supposes the 
complete development and discipline of all the other powers. 
The mind must be trained to analyze everything besides, before 
it can successfully analyze the processes and products of its own 
power to know. The mind must reach a high degree of psycho- 
logical development, before it is prepared to comprehend its pro- 
cesses and products under their most comprehensive logical 
relations. The power of thought must be disciplined by exercise 
upon many objects and in manifold methods before, it can be 
competent to analyze the most general relations that are assumed 
in the several operations of knowledge and are the rational 
foundations of its confidence in whatever it knows. It must have 
studied these operations of the intellect familiarly, before it can 
ask itself what relations each of them imply. As the thought- 
power is at once the analyzing and generalizing power, so the 
study of £hese relations is regaled as intimately related to it. 



420 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§244 






This critical examination of the power to know, involves a 
philosophical scrutiny of the grounds and trustworthiness of all 
knowledge and belief. It convinces us that the relations 01 
principles which we receive and trust as axioms in one kind of 
knowledge, are to be trusted in another. It shows us, moreover, 
that we are bound to believe and follow them wherever they lead 
us, because we cannot know any truth without them. It sets aside 
objections that are derived from the denial of these relations by 
showing that they are not only fundamental, but are always 
applicable It disarms skepticism of every kind, whether it be 
philosophical, ethical, or theological, by showing that the relations 
which the human mind must apply in its lower knowledge, it 
cannot refuse to trust in their higher applications. 

These inquiries conduct us from the field of psychology towards 
and into the fields of both logic and metaphysics. It is not 
practically easy to draw the lines which determine the boundaries 
of each. The critical analysis comes first in time, and is appro- 
priate to psychology : logic and metaphysics avail themselves 
of the results which this psychological analysis gives. 

Strictly speaking, in psychology we show by analysis that we 
constantly require and employ these cognitions, while in logic 
and metaphysics we inquire what they are, and what are their relations 
to the other objects of knowledge. Inasmuch, however, as it is 
impossible to separate the analysis of a process from an analysis 
of its product, the psychological will often seem to encroach upon 
the logical and metaphysical sphere. 

These ultimate facts and relations are not gained by any of the 
processes of the intellect which we have thus far considered. They 
are not perceived by sense-perception, nor felt by consciousness ; 
they are neither reproduced in memory, nor represented or 
created by the phantasy ; they are not generalized from simple 
experience of material or spiritual objects ; they are neither 
proved by deduction, nor inferred by induction. Their truth 
and validity are not apprehended by, but they are involved 
in these processes. They are developed and brought to view in 
connection with these processes, and are assumed in them all. 
tihy have been They have sometimes been referred to a special 
iorSte t0 a and separate faculty. This so-called faculty has beer; 
f*'«Hy. designated by various appellations, as the reason, coup 






§ 245. THE INTUITIONS DEFINED AND ENUMERATED. 421 

mon sense, judgment, intuition, faith, the intelligence, the regulative 
faculty, the noetic faculty, 6 Nooq as contrasted with ^ Atdvoia, 
die Vernunft as contrasted with der Verstand. But it has been 
generally conceded that the word faculty is not employed in its 
usual signification. Thus Hamilton observes {Met. Lee, 38), 
the term " faculty is employed, not to denote the proximate 
cause of any definite energy, but the power the mind has of 
being the native source of certain necessary or a priori cogni- 
tions." 

The cognitions or beliefs themselves "have ob- 
tained various appellations." They have been de- tionsVy^hich 
nominated : Intuitions, categories of thought, first prin- known. 
ciples, self-evident or intuitive truths, primitive notions, 
innate cognitions, metaphysical or transcendental truths, ultimate 
or elemental laws of thought, primary or fundamental laws of 
human belief, pure or transcendental or a priori cognitions. They 
are called intuitions because they are discerned by reflex analysis 
to be present in all our knowledge, and categories of thought 
because as generalized conceptions they are of universal applica- 
tion as the foundations of thought and science. 

It will be observed that some of these appellations designate 
propositions, which affirm the reality and authority of these re- 
lations, and others the relations themselves in the form of con- 
cepts. The distinction is purely formal. It is a matter of terms 
and not of thoughts, of language only, but not of things. It is 
true in this as in all other cases, that it is from or through a pro- 
position, that each of these concepts is derived. The concepts 
of cause and effect and of causation, those of means and adapta- 
tion as well as those appropriate to extension and duration, are 
first gained through propositions expressing beliefs. 

§ 245. It is often convenient to generalize these 
as propositions. In such cases we call them primitive order of 'tim^ 
judgments or first truths. In naming them first truths Sportancf . K ^ 
or primitive judgments, it is not intended that these 
truths or judgments are acquired first in the order of time, or 
that the mind's assent to them is prior to its other acts of know- 
ledge. That they cannot be acquired or assented to first of all, 
is evident from the unquestionable fact that, by very many they 
are never acquired at all. The majority of men never think of 



422 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 246. 

them, much less do they assent to them. Even the majority who 
attain to not a little culture, do not reach a clear and intelligent 
conviction that these propositions are true. 

It was forcibly urged by Locke that such propositions as 
" whatever is, is " and " the same thing cannot be and not be at the 
same time," cannot be innate, for the plain reason that men at 
their birth, and in all the early period of their existence are en- 
tirely incapable of understanding the meaning of the concep- 
tions and terms of which these propositions are composed ; and if 
they cannot understand the constituent elements, much less are 
they capable of asserting that one of them is true of the other. 
It might be further enforced by the consideration, that the mass 
of men are incapable of that analytic abstraction which is neces- 
sary to detach the universal from the individual example in 
which it is realized. Or, if we concede or suppose that the 
causal attribute or relation could, by analysis, be distinguished 
from the individual example of cause or effect, an additional act 
of generalization would be necessary to qualify the mind to 
assent to the general truth, " Every event must have a cause.' " 

These truths, instead of being the first to be con- 
fa^ hey attained sciously possessed and assented to, are the last which 

last in the order ^ reachedj and by only a few Q f the race are eyer 

reached at all. Experience proves that long courses 
of training are required, to bring the intellect into a capacity for 
analysis and generalization, which may enable it to understand 
and assent to them. The mind must be exercised to some extent 
in philosophical studies before it can comprehend their import 
and application. 

§ 246. These truths or judgments stand first 
cations of a in the order of rational or logical importance. Hence 

they are called first principles : principles or truths a 
priori, as opposed to knowledges a posteriori. As concepts they 
are called categories, pure cognitions, etc. 

The term principle, which is so often used in this connection, 
is variously employed, and admits of many senses. It may be 
generally defined as any thing with which the mind begins in an 
act of rational or logical combination, or more generally still, as 
the constituent of any synthetic product. The word principium, 
<*m> k> literally, a beginning or starting-point. Inasmuch as 



§ 246. THE INTUITIONS DEFINED AND ENUMERATED. 423 

there are as many beginnings as there are processes or progresses 
to different ends or results, so the word principle is used in the 
following special meanings. 

1. Any constituent element of an existing thing, whether it is 
material or spiritual — whether it is a being, act, or product, is a 
principle. The materials which we bring together, or think belong 
together so as to constitute any existing object, are sometimes 
called principles. In a similar way, the simple concepts that 
make up any complex concept or general notion whatever, are 
called principles. 

2. Any causal agent in matter or spirit, is called a principle, 
because the cause is looked upon as originating and beginning 
the effect. Thus we say of a machine, it has the principle of 
motion within itself. It is not uncommon to apply it to the capa- 
cities of the soul, viewed as causes of its functions or activities 
Thus, we say, there is a principle in man's nature by which he is 
able to distinguish truth from falsehood, or right from wrong. 

3. A\\ general propositions which are admitted or used as 
■premises in deduction, are also principles. They are so called, 
because the mind begins with one of them in the process of its 
reasoning. 

4. All generalizations from induction, as well as all collected 
observations from experience, are called principles, for the reason 
that they are used to explain and account for the occurrence of 
particular events or phenomena. The mind begins with these in 
all its rational solutions. Hence the powers of nature and the laws 
of nature, as well as observed facts when generalized and supposed 
to indicate some concealed law, are freely called principles. 

5. Those general truths which are the starting-points of the 
reasonings or communications of any special science or art, are 
called, with eminent propriety, principles ; because, in imparting 
or demonstrating the science, the teacher begins with these as 
facts, or reasons from them as premises. Hence the fundamental 
maxims or assumptions of mathematics, of logic, of law, of 
ethics, of politics and political economy, are called the principles 
of each of these sciences. 

6. But the appellation of principles is applied with preemi- 
nent propriety to any one of those universal concepts and rela- 
tions which are implied in any of the different kinds of knowledge, 



424 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §247. 

because it must be assumed or supposed as a beginning or ele- 
ment to make that knowledge conceivable. 

7. If there are other objects of knowledge usually called in- 
finite and absolute, which are necessarily implied in the special 
and limited relations, and are their necessary correlates, these 
preeminently deserve to be called principles, as they are in ra- 
tional order and dependence before, and are the grounds and ex- 
planation of, all other objects of thought and knowledge. Whether 
there are such, must be decided by our subsequent inquiries, and 
will be discussed in the appropriate place. 

§ 247. Our knowledge of these truths is occasioned 

The relation 7 . 7 _ . r _ . 

of intuition to by, but is not derived from experience. I his is 

experience. ... , , . 

most happily expressed in a seutence quoted by 
Hamilton from Patricius ; cognitio omnis a mente primam originem, 
a sensibus exordium habet primum. 

Indeed, the most sagacious thinkers coincide in this opinion, 
that our higher and a priori knowledge, while independent of 
experience as the source of its evidence and authority, is depen- 
dent upon experience as the occasion of its development. Thus 
Leibnitz, in criticising Locke for asserting that all our knowledge 
is derived from sensation and reflection, says : " The senses, al- 
though necessary for all our actual cognitions, are not, however, 
competent to afford us ail that our cognitions involve." Eeid 
also observes, in defence and explanation of Locke's real mean- 
ing: "I think Mr. Locke, when he comes to speak of the ideas 
of relations does not say that they are ideas of sensation or re- 
flection, but only that they terminate in and are concerned about, 
ideas of sensation and reflection." Essay vi. c. i. The doctrine 
of Kant upon this subject is uniformly as follows : " We must 
then first of all observe, that although all judgments of experi- 
ence are empirical, i. e., have their ground in the immediate per- 
ceptions of the senses, yet conversely it is not true, that all 
empirical judgments are for this reason judgments of experience, 
but in addition to the empirical element, and in general in addi- 
tion to that which is given to sense-intuition, particular concepts 
must be furnished, whose origin is a priori in the pure under- 
standing, under which every percept must be subsumed and so 
changed into true experiential as distinguished from empirical 
knowledge." Proleg. § 18. 



§ 247. THE INTUITIONS DEFINED AND ENUMERATED. 425 

Victor Cousin also repeats himself to the same effect abun- 
dantly in the following strain : " The idea of body is given 
to us by the touch and the sight, that is, by the experience 
of the senses. On the contrary, the idea of space is given to us, 
on occasion of the idea of body by the understanding, the mind, 
the reason ; in fine, by a faculty other than sensation. Hence 
the formula of Kant : ■ the pure rational idea of space comes so 
little from experience, that it is the condition of all experience.' " 
" Now the idea of space, we have just seen, is clearly the logical 
condition of all sensible experience. Is it also the chronological 
condition of experience and of the idea of body ? I believe no 
such thing." " Take away all sensation ; take away the sight 
and the touch, and you have no longer any idea of body, and 
consequently none of space." " Rationally, logically, if you had 
not the idea of space you could not have the idea of body ; but 
the converse is true chronologically, and in fact, the idea of space 
comes up along with the idea of body." Elements of Psychology, 
translated by C. S. Henry, chap. 2. Cours de FHistoire de la 
Phil, dulle siecle. Legon 17. 

The several stages by which these categories are developed in 
experience are the following : 

(1.) The first act or stage is the cognition of any concrete 
object, of which any attribute involving an intuition might be af- 
firmed, or exemplified. The object may be material or spiritual, 
it may be a being or an act, as these are commonly distinguished. 
For example, it may be a fruit, a piece of marble ; the combus- 
tion of wood, the explosion of gunpowder, the shooting of a star, 
the running of a horse ; a remembered occurrence, a sally of 
imagination, a fixed purpose, or the ego of our conscious acts. 

It is conceivable that these and the like objects may be cog- 
nized for an instant, without the perception of any relation. 

(2.) The next step or stage is the apprehension of these objects 
as related in one or more given ways. The fruit is known as 
oval in form, as large or small in size. The color, taste, and 
feeling of the fruit are thought of it as qualities or properties. 
The combustion and explosion, the remembering, the imagining, 
are known as acts of the material or spiritual agent or as effects 
of which these agents are the causes, or as the ends to which 
other acts are adapted, and for which they are designed. 



426 THE HUMAN INTELLECT, §247. 

This second stage is reached by the whole race, not to the 
same extent or perfection in all, but so far that all may be said 
to achieve this kind of knowledge. 

Material objects are known by all men as long and short, round 
and square. Events are known by all as before and after. One 
object or act is known as the cause or the end of another object 
or act. The words which express and indicate the more familiar 
of these relations are accepted in the language of all men. They 
are spoken by all, and understood by all as signifying these rela- 
tions. 

(3.) The next stage or act is when the relation is abstracted 
from the beings to which it belongs and is generalized into a con- 
cept higher and more extensive, which is treated as a separate en- 
tity. Thus long, short, etc., are contemplated as length or short- 
ness ; round, spherical, etc., are known as roundness and spheri- 
city ; past, present, and future are known as time relations ; the 
power to produce this or that effect is abstracted and general- 
ized as the causativerelation ; the individual fitness to accomplish 
this or that end is generalized and abstracted as the relation of 
adaptation. 

This third stage is more rarely reached. For the common pur- 
poses of life men have little occasion to view these attributes and 
relations as separate entities, and still less to carry them to the 
higher degrees of generalization. Practical men have little 
need to consider or to speak of the relations of time and space or 
substance or cause, when separate from concrete objects and 
events, and when generalized in abstract language. Even think- 
ing men, who may be well disciplined and practised in intellec- 
tual activities of other kinds, have few motives and little inclina- 
tion to deal with such entities in their more abstract forms. 

(4.) The fourth stage of experiment and assent is the critical 
consideration of the processes of knowledge, and the discern- 
ment of these relations as essential elements in all these pro- 
cesses and as the fundamental principles which are im, 
plied in them all. It is manifest that this stage is reached 
only by a few, and by those only whose attention is directed to 
the critical examination of their intellectual processes, and to a 
speculative consideration of the principles which they involve. 

(5.) The last stage or act of distinct knowledge is the recogni< 



§247. THE INTUITIONS DEFINED AND ENUMERATED. 427 

tion of the correlates, usually called infinite or absolute, which are 
required by these relations when they are generalized and reflected 
on. Thus the relations of extension when apprehended as be- 
longing to every material object, i. e., to the universe in its parts 
and as a whole, imply Space as their correlate ; those of dura- 
tion imply the correlate of Time ; the universe conceived as a 
single effect implies a single causing agent — the universe con- 
ceived as a designed effect requires that this agent should be in- 
telligent. 

These correlates Space, Time, and God, are conceived as the 
conditions of the possibility of the universe, and the ground of 
ite reality, and are therefore the first principles of every thing 
that is and can be known. 

It is manifest, for the reasons already given, that if it be as- 
sumed that there are such correlates to these finite beings, the con- 
sideration of them as the real and the necessary principles of all be- 
mgs is not within the reach of the majority of men. It requires 
a capacity for the highest analysis and abstraction of which the 
human mind is capable. It supposes an interest in and a capa- 
city for wider generalizations than most men exhibit. Few men 
attain to these ideas through processes that are purely specula- 
tive. Fewer can give the philosophical reasons by which they 
reach and on which they receive them. 

All men may have the capacity to assent to truths concerning 
them when propounded in terms that are not philosophical, and 
enforced by reasons that are not abstract and speculative ; but 
the number is exceedingly small of those w T ho can analyze the 
processes by which they are seen to be necessary, or assent to them 
as the grounds of all being and of all knowledge. 

This review of the several stages by which these truths are de- 
veloped to the mind's assent, serves to explain and confirm what 
has already been asserted, viz., that though first in authority and 
in logical dependence, they are the last in the order of time ; and 
that though all men manifest a practical belief in these princi- 
ples, when exemplified in the concrete, yet but few understand 
or assent to them when stated in a speculative form. 

It also enables us to understand how it is possible that they 
should be discovered and tested in a variety of methods suited to 
the condition of each of these classes, as also why the criteria 



428 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §247. 

which satisfy one class of minds should neither reach nor con- 
vince minds of another class. 

What is most important, it explains why the evidence for their 
truth and universal acceptance which is furnished by the lan- 
guage and the actions of men is more decisive and satisfactory 
than that which comes by speculative analysis or philosophical 
argumentation. 

We have seen that all men reach the second stage of know- 
ledge, so far as to apprehend many objects in one or all of these 
necessary relations to some other object, i. e., as substance or 
attribute, as cause or effect, as means or end, etc. This recogni- 
tion of these concrete relations, they express by their language in 
appropriate concrete terms, as by the noun, the adjective, the verb, 
etc., in the various forms of flexion and construction. Few 
men reach the third, and the number is therefore small who re- 
flect upon the relation of causation when it is generalized from 
individual instances, or who ask themselves whether it is uni- 
versal and necessary to the mind. 

And yet the very language which all men use is a constant 
profession of their faith in their reality and importance. Almost 
every sentence which they frame and word which they employ is 
a voluntary acknowledgment, that these intuitions are necessarily 
accepted by all men. When they act, every one of their expecta- 
tions and deeds is a more decisive avowal that these principles 
are absolutely certain, and never admit an exception. 

This review also explains how it can be that men may reject 
truths in theory which they admit in fact. In other words, it 
explains the apparent paradox that there may be truths which 
men always recognize in their actions, but deny or question when 
they are phrased as speculative or philosophical propositions. 

Such propositions must always be expressed in the language of 
the Schools, that is in language which is abstract and therefore to 
a certain extent technical in its signification. They must be de- 
fended by philosophical evidence, the evidence that is appropriate 
in the Schools ; which often rests upon principles with which the 
mind is by no means familiar, and is enforced by methods of 
reasoning to which it has not been trained or wonted. 

We are justified in appealing from the philosophy of men to 
their words and actions. What all men inadvertently confess in 



§ 248. THE INTUITIONS DEFINED AND ENUMERATED. 429 

their casual assertions, what they imply in the very forms of their 
language, what their actions unbiased by their theories show that 
they recognize, what their expectations from others show that 
they believe that their fellow-men also accept, what is assumed in 
all investigations and reasonings without the attempt to give any 
reasons for its truth, — these are all taken to be or to involve uni- 
versal and necessary truths of Intuition, however difficult it may 
be to define them correctly, to reconcile them with the dicta of a 
received philosophy, or to show their place in any order of syste- 
matic arrangement. 

§ 248. The philosophical criteria of the categories 

* r ° The Three Cri- 

and first truths are usually stated as three: 'their teria of First 

... Truths. 

universality, their necessity, and their logical inde- 
pendence and originality? 

(1.) First truths are universally received. If they are not uni- 
versal they can be neither necessary nor logically independent 
and original. But in what sense are they understood and by 
what evidence can they be shown to be universal ? Surely not in 
this, that all men actually assent to them when propounded in a 
scientific form and phraseology. 

This as we have seen is from the nature of the case impossible, 
inasmuch as all men are by no means capable of understanding 
the terms and grasping the conceptions which enter into them. 
But all men can believe them in the concrete, i. e., in every indi- 
vidual case in which they are exemplified, without knowing that 
thereby they presuppose knowledge, which, when stated in its 
abstract form, would involve the principles in question. 

(2.) First truths are also necessary. Truths to be universal 
and primitive must be necessary, i. e., the intellect must be con- 
strained by the constitution of its being and the spontaneous 
workings of its nature to receive them as true. It cannot kno^v 
objects of any kind except under these relations and according to 
the connections which they involve. Should it attempt to do so, 
or to prove that it does not employ and recognize them, it would 
make the effort of knowing without them, and of proving that it 
did not, by using these very relations in its efforts and its 
arguments. 

(3.) First truths must be logically prior to, and independent of, 
all other truths. Each one of them is the most generic concept 



430 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§248. 



of many similar individual relations. It can be itself resolved 
into no other, and can be proved by no other. 

This is what Burner must intend, when he says, " they are 
propositions so clear that they can neither be proved nor attacked 
by any propositions more clear than themselves." Hamilton 
means the same when he calls them incomprehensible, defining 
the term to signify, that of which we know the fact, but cannot 
give a reason. Hence they are called self-evident truths and in- 
tuitions, because they need only to be seen or apprehended to be 
believed. The act of critical or speculative intuition is not an act 
of sense-perception nor an act at all analogous to it ; but an act 
of knowledge which is direct and original and is the necessary 
condition of all other acts of knowing. 

It follows that these truths are neither discovered by induction 
nor generalized from experience. That they are not the results 
of induction has been shown by the nature of induction as 
revealed in the analysis already given of the process. It has 
been shown that the process itself involves certain assumptions 
as true; or the belief of certain relations as original and self- 
evident. Unless we begin by assuming that these relations are 
valid and original, we cannot confide in the process of induction 
itself. Indeed, without these assumptions, the process can have 
no meaning. 

That they cannot in any way be generalized from experience 
has been shown by the analysis already given of their relations 
to experience. J. S. Mill, in his Logic, contends most earnestly 
that all the so-called original necessary truths, including the 
postulates of mathematics, are derived by Induction through 
experience. The considerations already adduced are decisive 
against his theory. President M'Cosh entitled the earlier editions 
of his able work, Intuitions of the mind Inductively considered, but 
he used Induction in a general and popular sense. 

Nor can they be regarded as the highest premises for compre- 
hensive syllogisms, obtained by successive processes of regressively 
evolving the premises or assumptions on which narrower syllo- 
gisms are founded. This view has been countenanced, if it has 
not been taught directly, by philosophers of very high authority. 
Cf. Dr. Thomas Reid, Essays, VI. c. iv. Aristotle, Anal 
Post. i. 3 ; cf. i. 22. Cf. McCosh, Intuitions of the Human Mind, 



§ 249. THE INTUITIONS DEFINED AND ENUMERATED. 431 

Part i. B. i. c. ii. § 1 (6). Buffier, Traite d. prem. ver. Dessein, 
etc., § 6. 

It is, however, one thing to show that without first truths no 
deduction is possible, and quite another to show that such truths 
must be employed as the ultimate premises in the most compre- 
hensive deductions. The analysis already given of the deductive 
process has shown that it rests primarily upon the relation of 
reason to conclusion, which in its turn rests upon the relation 
of cause to effect. It has also shown that the materials for 
deduction are all derived from induction, or mental construction — 
as in mathematical or purely logical reasoning. First truths, or 
intuitive relations are implied as in one sense the support or 
foundation of the processes of deduction, but not in the way of 
serving as ultimate premises. 

Were we to consider the process of deduction solely in its 
logical relations, we should clearly see that these truths couid 
serve no use as premises. Nothing could be proved by such uni- 
versal and wide-reaching propositions as every event must be 
caused, etc., etc. For as soon as you interpose the minor, ' this 
explosion is an event,' you make no progress towards additional 
knowledge in the conclusion : you know already that this explo- 
sion was an event : you could not have known it at all without 
having already decided that it was one of the things that are 
caused. 

For the purposes of deduction, all such principles are barren 
and useless. Nothing can be derived from them. From their 
very nature, they are simply statements concerning those relations 
or elements, that are present in every act of our higher know- 
ledge. It is only because they are present as an essential and 
necessary element in all these processes that they must of neces- 
sity be conditions of deduction. 

§ 249. These intuitions or categories, are in the The areinde . 
strict sense of the term logically independent of one pe&^ntof one 

J J L J another. 

another. Their apparent dependence upon one an- 
other arises from the limits of the human intellect, which pre- 
scribe a certain order in the familiar acquisition of these con- 
cepts and in the frequency and extent of their application. 

The observation is very common that by a logical necessity we 
must think of being before we think of its relations or attributes ; 



432 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§249. 



of time before we think of space ; of all these before we think 
of cause, and of these together with causation before we think 
of design ; or, as expressed in other language : Being is funda- 
mental to all other categories, and must be presupposed before 
and as the condition of them all : and in a similar manner the less 
must precede thd more dependent till the entire circle is complete. 
But no one of these categories can be developed from another, 
If it could be it would not be primitive and original. Nor can 
one be explained into or resolved by another. None of them is 
properly complex, for if this were so, each of the constituent ele- 
ments would be original and primitive, but not their constituted 
whole. They cannot be dependent in the relation of content; for 
the import of one cannot be resolved into that of another. Nor 
i/j one more extensive than the other, so far as the real objects are 
concerned to which each may possibly be applied. Every object 
that exists must be conceived as existing, as diverse from 
others, as related to others, as whole or part, as in time and 
space, as capable of number, etc., etc. Were the mind capable 
of attending to all these conceivable relations of every existing 
object by a single intuitive act ; were it not dependent upon the 
slow processes of observation and induction to learn which is 
related to which as cause and effect, power and law, means and 
end, these relations would be equally extensive in their applica- 
tion, and would all be co-ordinate with one another in the view 
of the human as they are before the divine mind. But inas- 
much as the human mind proceeds in its knowledge step by step, 
some of these relations are familiarly and far more extensively 
applied than others. Some of them are applied to objects of 
imagination and thought, while others are more rarely affirmed 
even of things. The relations of dependence between them 
are chronological and psychological but not logical. 

This attempt to develop the categories from one another was 
Kegel's devel- carried to its extreme by Hegel, who began with being, and 
Stories! ^ makin S bein S to be e( l ual to nothing, i. e., to have no content, 
sought by what he called its becoming, i. e., the independent and 
necessary movement of the concept, to evolve all the categories from one another, 
not only of thought but of material and spiritual existence, in a self-completing 
and perpetually repeated circle. This self-evolved and self-completing circle of 
necessary concepts was conceived by him as the Idea, and all these together con- 
etituted the Absolute, i. e., the sum total of mutually-related possible, and conceiv- 
able thoughts and things. 



§ 250. THEORIES OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE 433 

Hegel's mistake was twofold. He attempted to derive things from thoughts, 
or real from logical relations, instead of finding all logical, i e.. all generalized 
relations in those which are real. He attempted to derive one category from an- 
other, instead of explaining the apparent dependence of onn upon another by 
the order in which they are developed to, and the extent in which they are 
applied by, the mind through its psychological limitations. 

§ 250. The categories or intuitions may be divided 
Into the formal, the mathematical, and the real. The fl J2Jci!«J f- 
formal are those which are involved in any act of 
logical knowledge, whatever be its object-matter — whether it 
be real, imagined, or generalized — whether it be an actually exist- 
ing or a purely mental creation. They are essential to the most 
abstract form of knowledge, and appear in all its objects or 
products. The mathematical are those which grow out of the 
existence of space and time and suppose these to be realities. 
The relations included under this definition are not exclusively 
used in the sciences of number and quantity, fcut inasmuch as 
they are fundamental to these sciences, we distinguish them by 
the epithet mathematical ; using it to designate all the time and 
space relations and those directly dependent upon them. The 
real are those which are ordinarily recognised as generic to and 
fundamental of the so-called qualities and properties of existing 
things, both material and spiritual. We do not, however, by 
using the term real, imply or concede that the formal and the 
mathematical are any the less real — but that they are not limited 
so exclusively to objects really existing. 



CHAPTER II. 

THEORIES OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 

A complete sketch of the various theories which have been held in respect to 
the nature, origin, and authority of primitive notions and intuitive judgments, 
would include the most important portion of a complete history of Metaphysics 
or Speculative Philosophy. Such a sketch would be entirely out of place in the 
present work, and will not be attempted. We shall only endeavor to group and 
critically examine, under a few comprehensive titles, those theories which have 
any present interest for modern thought, or which are still maintained in modera 
echools of philosophy. 

19 " 



434 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§2oa 



The theory of 
a direct mental 
vision of first 
truths. 



The theory that 
they are dis- 
cerned by the 
light of nature. 



§ 251. 1. It has been extensively taught that these original ideas 
and first truths are discerned by direct insight or intuition inde- 
pendently of any relations to phenomena. The power to behold 
them is conceived as a special sense for the true, the original, and 
the infinite ; as a divine Reason which is permitted to gaze directly upon thaf 
which is eternally true. Such are the representations of Plato, Plotinus, etc., 
among the ancients. Thus the Platonizing and Cartesian divines of the seven- 
teenth century, as Henry More, John Smith of Cambridge, Ralph Cudicorth, and 
multitudes of others, freely express themselves. Malebranche, Schelling, Coleridge, 
Cousin, and others, have given sanction to such views more or less clearly con- 
ceived and expressed. Those who combine with philosophic acuteness, the power 
of vivid imagination and eloquent exposition, not infrequently meet the diffi- 
culties which attend the analysis and explanation of the foundations of knowledge 
by these half-poetic and half-philosophic representations. 

It is manifest that the representations which they give are not true when liter- 
ally interpreted. No direct inspection of primitive ideas and principles is con- 
ceivable. It is not by withdrawing the attention from, but by fixing it upon, the 
facts and phenomena of the actual world, that the truths and relations of the 
world which is ideal and rational can be discerned at all. 

$ 252. 2. Many of the earlier philosophers and theologians of 
modern times, following the Scholastics of the middle ages, were 
accustomed to say that these ideas and truths are discerned by the 
light of reason and the light of nature, that they shine forth or are 
evidenced by their own light. The use of this language is in part 
to be traced to the often-repeated maxim of Aristotle that some truths cannot be 
demonstrated, but must be accepted without proof; in part by a Platonic interpre- 
tation of the passage in the gospel of John (i. 9), in which the Word is said to 
enlighten every man who cometh into the world. 

It is obvious that the phrase is figurative and expresses only the fact which re- 
mains to be explained and accounted for, that these truths are neither generalized 
from experience nor deduced by logical ratiocination ; that they are no sooner 
thought of than they are assented to, and that upon them as original assumptions 
rests the validity of all generalization and deduction. 

I 253. 3. The doctrine has been earnestly held and taught that 
these ideas and beliefs are innate in or connate with the soul. This 
is well known as the doctrine which Descartes is supposed to have 
taught, and to the refutation of which Locke devoted the first book 
It is that the intellect finds itself at birth or as soon as it wakes 
to conscious activity, to be possessed of ideas to which it has only to attach the 
appropriate names, or of judgments which it needs only to express in fit proposi- 
tions. "Whether this doctrine as thus stated and defined, was ever held by any 
one may perhaps be questioned. Even Descartes himself seems, when pressed, 
wholly to abandon the doctrine in the form in which he had propounded it and made 
it the foundation of the most important conclusions. 

On the other hand, it would be conceded by many, and can be defended as true, 
that the capacity to evolve these ideas and these truths is born with man and 
forms an essential feature of his constitution as man. Not only is man endowed 
with these capacities, but he is furnished with tendencies which impel to their 
«xercisip, and after which these conceptions and judgments arc surely and neces- 



That they are 
innate or con- 
nate. 

of his Essay. 



§ 254. THEORIES OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 435 

sarily developed so soon as the mind applies the necessary attention or awakes to 
the requisite conditions. Even before these conceptions are generalized they are 
assented to in the individual and concrete, in the most important kinds of know- 
ledge. 

§ 254. 4. From the doctrine of innate ideas and the school of 
Descartes, the transition is natural and direct to the views held by The views of 
Locke and the several divisions of his school. These are naturally school 
grouped together, though the interpretations of the meaning of 
Locke are very diverse, and the several schools that are named after Locke, hold 
opposite and incompatible opinions. It will be found, however, that they can all 
be traced to Locke, either as they are sanctioned by his direct authority or were 
derived from some of his principles by logical deduction or natural growth, or as 
they were devised to supplement some of his supposed oversights or defects. 

Locke, as is well known, rejected the doctrine of innate ideas and protested 
most vigorously against it, in the first book of his Essay. This protest was of 
the greatest service to philosophy in delivering it from the vague and fantastical 
assertions upon this subject which had been allowed before his time. It has 
been questioned and may be doubted, whether any sober and considerate thinker 
ever received the doctrine in the form and sense in which Locke rejected it. But 
it is certain that many philosophical writers have expressed themselves in 
language which warranted the interpretations which Locke thought it necessary 
to refute. 

But Locke did not guard himself against serious oversights in this polemic. 
He did not distinguish between those positive ideas of objects and acts in both 
matter and spirit which make up the materials or facts of knowledge — and the 
relations between these materials, which, ii possible, are more important than the 
facts which they conneet. Nor did he conceive at all the difference between an 
idea as acquired by experience and as occasioned by experience. He did not dis- 
cern that a relation which is developed by experience to conscious apprehension, 
must be implied or assumed to make experience possible. He did not distinguish 
between innate ideas and innate dispositions or capacities to develop and assent 
to truths which involve original ideas. To correct these oversights, Leibnitz 
subjoined his well-known reply to the adage, "nihil in intelleciu quod non prim 
in sensn " — " nisi ipse intellectus." 

Locke asserts positively that all our ideas are obtained through two sources, 
Sensation and Be/lection: Sensation gives the knowledge of sensible objects and 
their qualities; Reflection gives the knowledge of spirit and its operations. He 
was careful to add that except through these two sources we have no ideas what- 
ever. What Locke intended by ideas admits here of a question similar to that 
which was noticed in connection with innate ideas. Did he mean positively to 
exclude from ideas those necessary relations by which the mind connects all the 
objects of matter and spirit which it observes or experiences ? It is probable that 
this distinction was not in his mind, and that for this reason he did not provide 
against uncertainty or ambiguity of interpretation. It was not unnatural that, 
different constructions should be put upon doctrines thus announced, and that ac- 
cording to these diverse interpretations, there should spring up among his fol- 
lowers different schools of philosophy. 

One class of those who called themselves his disciples, by greatly limiting or 
almost setting aside his definition of reflection, interpreted him as teaching that 



436 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§ 254 



all our positive ideas are «f material objects, and perverted his principles so as to 
make him teach a materialistic philosophy. Condillac thus applied his doctrine, 
and derived from it the conclusion that all our ideas, whether those of sense 
or spirit, are simply transformed sensations. "LocLe distingue deux sources de 
nos idees : les sens et la reflexion. II serait plus exact de n'en reconnaitre qu'une 
source, parce que la reflexion n'est dans son principe que la sensation elle meme, 
soit parce qu'elle est moins la source dcs idees que le canal par lequel elles decou- 
lent des sens." — Traite des Sensations. This doctrine in the form in which it was 
taught by Condillac and by others of the French school, was long since aban- 
doned, but tendencies to the same doctrine, if not to the same opinions in respect 
to the nature and origin of mental activities and their products, retain their hold 
most tenaciously among many modern psychologists, such a>s J. S. Mill and 
Alexander Bain with others. 

Hume (Treatise on Human Nature, Part IH.,£ $ 2, 3, 4, 14, 15; Inquiry con- 
cerning the Human Understanding, $ 7,) applied Locke's dictum in respect 
to the sources of knowledge, to the analysis of the relation of causation, or as he 
called it, of the ideas of Cause and Effect, and of Necessary Connection. He first 
demonstrates, as it is easy to do, that these ideas are not to be gained from Sen- 
sation. He then inquires whether they can be gained by Reflection, or the con- 
scious experience which we have of the exercise of power in the production of 
effects by volition. To this he answers in the negative, experience giving us 
only the invariable succession or the constant conjunction of these internal 
ideas. 

How then, he asks, does it happen that we connect objects as causes and effects, 
and what is the meaning of the combination? We certainly do thus connect 
them, and we give to them as thus connected the names respectively of causes and 
effects. To his own question, he replies : Objects which are observed to be always 
conjoined, we invariably associate in our minds : When we observe the one we 
cannot avoid thinking of the other : The principle of association is that which 
explains, and it is the only mental law that explains, the combination of objects 
and events as causes and effects. 

The solution applied by Hume to the single relation of cause and effect, has 
since his time been applied to the explanation of other of the so-called necessary 
truths or primitive cognitions. Bugald Stewart used it to account for the belief 
that every visible or colored object involves a belief in, and an apprehension of 
extension. Dr. Thomas Brown carried it still farther, applying it to a great num- 
ber of relations. James Mill, in his Analysis of the Human Mind, was the first, to 
find in the doctrine of inseparable or indissoluble associations a solvent for all 
necessary beliefs and original conceptions. John Stuart Mill, his son, in his 
Logic and Examination of the Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, has applied 
this principle in detail to all the so-called original and necessary truths with the 
conceptions which they involve ; persisting in attempting to show by this single for- 
mula that mathematical conceptions and axioms are generalized from experience, 
that the universal and necessary belief in causation is itself the product of induction, 
which again results from associations that cannot be overcome or separated. 
Herbert Spencer, while on the one hand he earnestly contends that inconccirabili'ji 
of the opposite is the decisive test of original truths, holds that these veiy 
axioms are our earliest inductions from experience. Moreover, he holds that the 
capacity of induction itself is not only the result of processes of association, but 



§ 255. THEORIES OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 437 

these descend from one generation to another with an augmented tendency, till 
they acquire that irresistible force which excludes the conceivability of other re- 
lations. All these writers may be said to belong to the school of Locke, but they 
receive only one or two of his leading doctrines and interpret them in a narrow 
spirit, and apply them to explain conceptions and beliefs to which Locke never 
thought of applying them. 

$ 265. 5. Dr. Thomas Reid, with Hutcheson, Oswald, and Beat- 
tie, was aroused by the skeptical conclusions derived by Hume and Dr. Reid and 
Berkeley from the doctrines of Locke, to combat his principle as gci^o^ 
it had till then been interpreted — that all ideas are obtained from 
sensation or reflection— and to assert for the mind itself an independent power or 
source of knowledge. This power was called by him Common Sense, and to it 
was referred our belief in the original and fundamental elements of all knowledge. 
Reid was especially earnest in asserting the necessity of first principles as the 
foundations of knowledge in general and of every special science in particular. 
Of these principles there is a great variety — logical, grammatical, mathematical, 
moral, sesthetical, metaphysical, as well as those facts given in the experiences of 
sense and consciousness. All these are discerned by that power which he called 
common sense, and occasionally judgment. The nature and the conditions of this 
faculty he did not exactly define, nor its relations to other powers, nor the laws of 
it3 acting, nor the character and place of its products. He was content to assert 
that there must be a source of this kind of knowledge independently of experience, 
and that these first truths are to be received upon its authority. Dugall Stewart 
followed Reid in insisting upon "fundamental laws of human belief," and "ori- 
ginal elements of human knowledge." He, however, subjected to analysis some 
of those truths which were asserted by Reid to be original, and allowed to the 
law of association an influence which Reid had not recognized. Brown deviated 
materially from Reid and Stewart in attaching greater importance, in his analysis 
of our conceptions, to the laws of association. He resolved the relation of cause 
and effect into that of invariable antecedence and succession. He occasionally 
refers to some original belief or tendency to belief as necessary to explain our 
actual experience. He also distinctly recognized a faculty or power called rela- 
tive suggestion, which of itself originates or discerns certain original relations; 
making it, like ~Rcid's judgment, to be the originator of and voucher for these 
original relations or categories. His system is not always congruous or consist- 
ent with itself, inasmuch as he attributes greater authority at one time to the 
associational, and at another to the intuitional element. 

In France, Royer Collard and Jouffroy followed in general the method and tho 
doctrines of Reid, with a more analytic scrutiny and a more systematic 
arrangement of the original data of knowledge. Each of these writers made 
some important improvements upon the doctrines of their teachers. 

Maine de Riran followed out the doctrine of Loeke in respect to Reflection, and 
attempted to find in Reflection the source of some important first truths. He 
went further than Locke in this direction and borrowed from Leibnitz some im- 
portant modifications of Locke's teachings in respect to the nature of power and 
the essential activity of the mind as a discoverer of original and independent 
truth. Cousin sought to unite Reid, Collard and Kant. 

These writers might perhaps be more properly grouped together as belonging 
to a separate school — the Scottish, or the Scottish and French School. But a more 



438 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§256. 



careful study of the doctrines of Locke reveals the fact that in the latter part of 
the Essay, when he came to analyze and account for the ideas of relation, parti- 
cularly of such primitive relations as substance, cause, and adaptation, he departs 
from the doctrines which he was supposed to have laid down in the preceding 
chapters. He certainly did not place that construction upon them which many 
of his disciples imposed after his time. In accounting for these original ideas, 
he seems to ascribe them directly to the intellect itself, and to an original power 
to discern, and an original necessity to receive them as true. In short, without 
asserting, in form, any new source of ideas, and without in the least abandoning 
his previous teachings — while in reply to the objections which were brought 
against him for inconsistency, he earnestly defends his own consistency 
with himself — he does in fact take the same ground with Reid and the Scottish 
School. Cf. (T. E. Webb. Intellectualism of Locke.) 

If this is a correct interpretation of Locke's real opinions, then Reid and 
his disciples are properly connected with the school of Locke, notwithstanding 
their earnest polemic against some of the doctrines which they supposed him to 
teach. 

§ 256. 6. From Hume and Reid, who were antagonist disciples 
? an 1 t aQ<1 his i n the school of Locke, we pass to the speculations of Kant, and 
consider his views of first principles and the categories. Kant, liku 
Reid, was aroused by the skepticism of Hume to investigate the foundations of 
knowledge. He saw that if the solution given by Hume of the relation of causa- 
tion were accepted and applied to others which are as original and fundamental; 
then scientific knowledge would be impossible, and religious faith would be un- 
supported by any rational foundations. He therefore set himself to tho work o; 
examining, by critical analysis, the intellectual powers, to ascertain, if possible, 
whether knowledge a priori is possible, and if so, what must be its original ele- 
ments and authority. The results of his critical inquiries were as follows : The 
human intellect may be considered as Sense, Understanding, and Reason, and to 
each of these powers or modes of action, there are elements a priori. To the 
Sense, space and tine must be assumed as a priori conditions. If these are not 
thus assumed, neither perception nor consciousness could possibly gain the know- 
ledge appropriate to each. Moreover, unless the knowledge of both space and 
time is a priori, the mathematical sciences would be impossible. 

The Understanding is the power of generalizing and of logical reasoning. To 
this, certain forms of conception are also necessary as its a priori conditions, 
such as substance and attribute, and cause and effect. Without these forms a priori, 
the processes of the Understanding would be impossible and their products would 
6e untrustworthy. 

The Reason is the power by which we give unity to our knowledge of both 
material and spiritual phenomena, as well in the several portions of each, as when 
these portions are mutually connected and related with one another. To this 
unifying process, there must be assumed, as necessary presuppositions, certain 
ideas a priori, viz.: the soul, the external world, and God. 

The a priori elements of our knowledge, according to Kant, are the receptivi- 
ties of space and time for the Sense ; the forms or categories for the Understand- 
ing ; and the ideas for the Reason. That these elements are assumed and applied 
in all our higher knowledge, was shown by Kant to follow necessarily from the 
analysis of that knowledge which is gained by the intellect, and indirectly fron; 



§ 256. THEORIES OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 439 

the direct analysis of the operations of its several powers. These were the 
positive results of his psychological analysis. 

But Kant raised another inquiry. Are these a priori and necessary assump- 
tions themselves worthy of confidence ? Are they true, and do they hold good of 
the nature of things, or do they simply arise from the constitution of the human 
intellect — a change in which might involve a change in these necessary relations 
and in the knowledge which is built upon them ? To these questions of his own 
asking, Kant makes the following reply : These assumptions have for man a 
regulative force, but perhaps only a relative truth and validity. That is, while 
man must act in his intellectual processes under the belief that these principles 
are primary and universal, and thus admit them as giving law to his own intel- 
lect, and as grounding and explaining all his knowledge, he is not authorized 
thereby to assume that they hold good as the laws of those minds which may be 
supposed to be constituted differently from the human, or that they hold true of 
the knowledge which such minds acquire. On the one hand, we cannot deny that 
they do hold true for other beings and their knowledge; and on the other, we 
cannot deny that they do not. For aught that we know, it may be true, that 
other beings might be so constituted as not to assume these principles, or to know 
by means of the relations which they involve. "We cannot affirm that there are 
such beings. We cannot deny that there may be. We cannot conceive how there 
should be. We cannot imagine intellectual processes that do not run back into 
these relations and principles, nor can we conceive of any knowledge which is 
not held together by these relations, but we have no rational ground for denying 
that both are possible. 

This is the last result of the critical examination to which Kant subjected the 
intellectual faculty. These views have had extensive currency among the phil- 
osophers of Germany and England, and the assertion of them has wrought like 
leaven, to stimulate inquiry and to excite to counter assertions. Many who would 
not accept them have found it difficult to show their groundlessness or their un- 
truth, in part or in whole. Many philosophers who have followed Kant in his 
analysis of the foundations of our knowledge, have felt themselves constrained 
to enter a special protest against these views, or to seek to vindicate a different 
theory. 

The only part of Kant's theory with which we are here concerned is the sug- 
gestion which he makes, that the relations and principles which we find to be 
original and assume to be true for our own thinking and knowledge, are not ne^ 
cessarily true and valid for all thinking and all knowledge. 

Concerning this we observe : 

(1.) It is a question of Speculative Philosophy or Metaphysics, and not at all 
a question of Psychology. Psychologically considered, the views of Kant do not 
differ materially from those of other philosophers so far as the proposition is 
concerned, that certain truths must be received as universal and necessary, and 
that these are given to the mind a priori. It is one chief object of his Critique 
to show that such principles are not obtained by experience, but must be assumed 
in order to make experience possible, as without them we could have neither 
experience nor science. 

That which he subjoins to this ascertained result of psychological analysis, is 
the suggestion that this may be true in human psychology only, and not in the 
psychology of other knowing beings. Whatever may be the probability or rca 



440 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§256. 






sonableness of this suggestion, it is in no sense a psychological fact. It is purely 
a philosophical thesis, to be urged and defended on speculative grounds. 

(2.) This metaphysical suggestion or thesis is unsupported by any grounds of 
analogy or probability. The facts which suggested the thesis are the known 
changes in the objects of sense-perception, which are connected with known 
changes in the organism of the percipient or in the medium by which this perci- 
pient apprehends. These changes are most conspicuous in vision. An object 
seen through a colored lens, be it red or green or blue, is seen to be red or green or 
olue. In like manner, the color of objects is, to a limited extent, affected by 
changes in the physical condition of the eye. Some men, through disease, see 
objects colored as they are not in reality. Others are incapable of seeing any 
differences of color, or at best, only a few varieties. 

Upon analogies derived from these facts, Kant justifies himself in asserting 
that there may or might exist created or finite minds which know other relations 
than those of time, apace, substance, causality. To this it is enough to reply 
that the facts from which these suggestions are derived are phenomena of the cor- 
poreal organism — while the acts and objects to which they are applied by way of 
analogy pertain J ;o the pure intellect. We know moreover of the phenomena of 
the organism, that the corporeal organism is a factor which, with material condi- 
tions, not only presents the object for the mind to perceive, but makes it to be 
what it is to a certain extent, so that the object changes with its changing factors 
and conditions. But to these thoughts- or intellectual relations no such conditions 
are required. Certainly the objects are not known to change with any conditions. 
So far as these relations are applied to material objects it makes no difference 
what the objects are. Many are equally applicable to spiritual beings, and their 
Dhenomena, products, and trustworthiness cannot be weakened or set aside by 
analogies derived from material beings and phenomena. 

All positive grounds for applying any analogies of the kind are found to be 
wanting. 

(3.) The suggestion of Kant is inconsistent with, and overthrown by, the roach 
and necessary use of some of these very relations which are brought into dis- 
trust. It is open to the charge of being an intellectual felo de se. For example, 
all the positive ground for the suggestion, founded upon an analogy which we have 
seen to be invalid because irrelevant, rests upon one of these first truths them- 
selves, one of these very original relations, which Kant subjects to metaphysical 
doubt as to whether it may not be merely contingent upon the human constitu- 
tion. It is perfectly clear that the question which he raises, is whether know- 
ledge by these relations as a subjective process, and the relations themselves as 
objective facts, may not be and probably are, effects of which the human con- 
stitution is a cause. We notice also that the reason by which he supports his 
suggestion is, that we are justified in so interpreting — which we have shown is 
misinterpreting — certain signs or indications furnished by analogous phenomena. 
In this argument it will be obvious to all our readers who accept the analysis 
which we have given of induction, that the assumptions which he contends are 
only regulative, are used and applied by him as though they were real. He cer 
tainly applies with entire confidence, the relations of cause and effect as neces- 
sarily and really applicable to the constitution of man as viewed by all beings 
whatever, and wholly omits to notice that he has suggested that these relation! 
necessarily employed in human thinking, are merely contingent upon the acei- 



§ 258. THEORIES OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE- 441 

dents of that thinking, and may not belong to the constitution of the soul as 
viewed or known by any other being, whether creature or Creator. 

This is not all. Not only are they used as though they were real, but they are 
used as real in order to prove that they arc only regulative. He reasons thus: 
Upon the principles to which I must conform as the laws of my human thinking, 
do I conclude that it is more than probable that these principles themselves 
are true of human thinking only. How convincing and consistent such reason- 
ing is, it is easy to see. 

$ 257. 7. From Kant to Hamilton the transition is natural, be- 
cause the connection between their views is most intimate. Ham- Positive and 

ilton holds that our native cognitions are both Universal and Ne- Negative Ne- 

cossity. 
ee-isary. The Necessity of a cognition may, however, be of two 

species. It may be either Positive or Negative. It may either result from the 
power of the thinking principle, or from the power lessness of the same to think 
otherwise. Of Positive Cognitions he says: " To this class belong the notion of 
existence and its modifications, the principles of identity, contradiction, and ex- 
cluded middle, and the intuitions of space and time." All these are discerned by the 
mind by a necessity which positively pertains to the objects discerned and in the 
reality of which the mind absolutely confides. 

To the other class belong the relations of Substance and Phenomena, and of 
Cause and Effect. These are necessary through the imbecility of the mind to 
conceive of existence in any other way than under these relations. This neces- 
sity is only a special case of the application of the more general law of the con- 
ditioned ; which in its turn is described as the necessity which constrains the 
mind to think of every object as a medium between two extremes, each of which 
is respectively contradictory of the other and so both cannot be true, while yet 
the mind must think the object under one of the two. 

The exposition and discussion of this Law of the Conditioned may be deferred 
till we consider its application to the special conceptions and relations of Cause 
and Effect. (Cf. § 297.) 

It is enough to say here, that it seems to be in its principle the same with the 
doctrine of Kant, that certain cognitions are necessary to the mind because of its 
peculiar constitution, which would no longer be so in case this constitution were 
changed or other than it is. They are therefore Regulative only, that is, they 
control the actions of the human mind and their products, because we cannot 
avoid employing them, knowing all the while that we are obliged to do this be- 
cause we are finite. They are true relatively, *. e., true only in relation to our 
limited capacities. 

We urge against this substantially the same objections to which the doctrine of 
Kant is liable, viz. : that we must use these very conceptions which are said to 
be merely Regulative and Relative, in the very judgments which we form of the 
mind and these very relations; and again, its tendency is skeptical, like that of 
Kant. It ought to be regarded with distrust if for no other reason than that it 
introduces contradictions between the decisions and dicta of the separate activi- 
ties of the intellect. 

$ 258. 8. To meet, or rather, to shut off, the difficulties pro- 
pounded by Kant, and in part assented to by Hamilton, Faith has Yaith as con- 
been proposed as the source of certain original conceptions and tjasted -with 
primary beliefs. Sometimes Feeling, or some act more akin to the 

19* 



442 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§258. 



emotive than to the intellectual powers, has been urged as the originator and 
voucher of the primary beliefs, and indirectly of the knowledge which is built 
upon them. This faith or feeling has most usually had for its object or objects, 
the Absolute, the Infinite, or the Unconditioned, rather than the ultimate concep- 
tions under which finite existences are thought by the mind and the primary re- 
lations by means of which these existences are classified and connected. God, the 
Soul, Time, Space, Immortality — have been usually the objects which it is asserted 
are received by this original assent of. Faith or Feeling. Sometimes the moral 
relations have been conceived as the direct object of the soul's apprehension ? 
together with God and the soul. The tendency to cut the knot which an intellec- 
tual analysis has failed to untie, is most conspicuous as perpetually reappearing 
in the entire history of modern philosophy. The need of an ultimate and deci- 
sivo authority for our confidence in the actings of the soul, has often prompted 
to a coup de main, by which some usurping power, under the fairest names, has 
seated itself in the place of rule, and the usurpation has been acquiesced in, by 
reason of the temporary peace and order which has followed in the intellectual 
convictions and the received systems of science, morality and theology. 

Descartes, having vainly sought for some criterion of truth which should assure 
him that his senses did not deceive him, and that his judgment in regard to his 
spiritual operations might be trusted, found repose in the veracity and benevo- 
lence of the Great Creator, of whose existence he was assured by the innate idea 
which attests both his existence and his perfections. This being given, the 
cognitions and inferences of the intellectual faculty may be trusted, when they 
are properly tested by the criteria or norms which the Creator himself has pro- 
vided. 

Kant, after despairing to find in the speculative Reason any warrant for trusting 
those necessary cognitions which are universal to all men, and assumed a priori as 
the conditions of all experience and all science, finds in the categorical imperative 
of the Practical Reason a voucher for the law of Duty. Unconditional faith in 
Duty was the corner-stone of his system, the only sure foundation which he could 
find among the ruins into which he had disintegrated the structures of the merely 
speculative Inte?lect, and upon which he could rebuild the same and make them 
compact and safe. Faith in Duty requires faith in God to defend and reward 
Duty. Hence the same Practical Reason which commands us categorically (t. e., 
unconditionally, and without asking or finding reasons or grounds) to believe in 
Duty, commands us to believe there is a true and perfect God. But such a God 
will not deceive his creatures. If we trust in Him we may confide in the specula- 
tive testimony of the Reason which he has constructed and created, concerning 
those conceptions which it originates and requires ; and may assign them the 
place which they take and hold in our knowledge, not as being merely a priori 
assumptions under which we are obliged to think, but as being fundamental truths 
which we must accept as real. By the Practical Reason we allow these forms of 
thought by which we must regulate our thinking, to become the rcpresentativeg 
of those forms of being which control the world of reality. 

Jacobi felt the difficulties in which Kant involved himself and the minds of hit 
generation, but was not content with the solution which he furnished. He adopted 
another, similar in principle, indeed, but slightly varied in its applications. Ta 
tho T^ower of apprehending that which is primary and unconditionally true, ho 
gave the names, at first of Faith, afterwards of Feeling and the Revelation of tht 



§ 258. THEORIES OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 443 

Divine, and last of all, of Reason Proper. The objects which this power appre- 
hends are not moral and religious objects and relations exclusively; but the objects 
of sense and consciousness with the relations which they involve, as truly as God, 
the Soul, and Immortality. These are all received by the direct faith of the soul, 
and this faith and the truth of what it receives is the precondition of all analysis, 
inference and deduction t In all these processes we simply analyze and explicate 
what is given to faith impliedly and as a whole. Jacobi simply asserted these 
principles to be the foundation truths of all knowledge. He did not show how they 
«ould be true or why we believe them. Indeed, he despaired of any such analysis. 
He did not ieel adequate to illustrate them in the detail ; he simply rested in their 
truth. 

Schleiermacher recognized feeling — the feeling of dependence — as the ground 
and medium of all the knowledge of the Absolute that we can attain. But we 
can neither conceive of God nor define our concepts of him. All efforts in this dL 
rection, as well as their results, are entirely inadequate and misleading. So far he 
is at one with Jacobi. With him he makes feeling or faith the ground of our appre- 
hensions of the Infinite and Divine. In respect to our knowledge of and faith in 
the conceptions that are fundamental to finite knowledge — he would be foremost 
to assert that these are a priori conditions and assumptions of the intellect, and 
that nature herself is constructed in correspondence with these forms of human 
thought : we have therefore the amplest ground for trusting the processes that 
are essential to our higher knowledge and the results to which they conduct us. 
The relations of finite existence, including those of space and time, of substance 
and attribute, of cause and effect, were considered by Schleiermacher forms of exis- 
tence, or real forms in contradistinction to the subjective forms of Kant and Fichte 
and the notion forms of Hegel. These are apprehended by the intellect directly, 
or, in the phraseology of his system, by the intellectual function, to the opera- 
tions of which, in connection with the organic function, all the forms of finite 
knowledge are to be referred. 

Some of the more recent German philosophers, as Chalybxus, Reiff, and pre- 
eminently Lotze, rest their confidence in the fundamental assumptions of the 
human intellect, upon ethical grounds. The questions propounded by Kant, viz. : 
" Suppose after all that the constitution of our nature should itself not be trust- 
worthy when it causes and impels us to think according to these original forms ' 
and fundamental assumptions ? Suppose that the relations or forms of things, 
which seem to correspond to the relations or forms by which we think sbould 
prove to be unreal ?" they answer thus : " We must believe that nature is benev- 
olent in her indications and therefore true. We assume that goodness and vera- 
city regulate both the objective relations of the universe wh:.jh we study and the 
subjective constitution of the intellect which interprets it. For these reasons we 
rely upon the categories of both thought and being, and learn to think in accor- 
dance with them, trusting the results which we gain. 

As Hamilton (as we have seen): in his views of the extent and limits of our 
knowledge, followed Kant and Schleiermacher, so he borrowed from both the 
required solution. While he asserts that we cannot think the infinite and uncondi- 
tioned, because to think is to limit and to condition, he concedes that we know the 
same.. When he is asked how ? he replies, by faith: we must believe in the Infinite. 
The extremes of our knowledge, between which we form our concepts — and out of 
the relations of which w? form our concepts — we must believe exist and are related 



444 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 260. 

to one another. The fact of their necessary existence we receive by a direct insight, 
which he calls both faith and knowledge. He borrows from Kant conceptions 
that are appropriate to the Practical Reason — so far at least as ethical distinc- 
tions, moral liberty and a personal God are concerned. From Jacobi he adopts 
the term faith. With the doctrine of Schleiermacher the details of his theory 
of the Unconditioned are closely allied. Cf. Hamilton (Met., Lee. 38 j also 
Appendix, Letter to Calderwood). 

That which gives plausibility to the doctrine that Faith or Feeling is the ulti- 
mate ground of this kind of knowledge is that it is not received by any act of 
conscious assent to propositions, of which the elementary concepts are first dis- 
tinctly apprehended apart and then united, but the mind first believes or knows 
before it reflectively discriminates its knowledges into their elements. Hence the 
act is called faith in opposition to and in distinction from judgment, the last being 
supposed to involve analysis as well as combination. Ethical and religious ob- 
jects are those which most frequently bring it into exercise, and these invariably 
excite more or less feeling. Hence the special source of these convictions is con- 
ceived as something not intellectual, and is simply called feeling at one time,and 
faith at another. The oversight lies in making these terms to imply that the act 
is not intellectual. It must be preeminently an intellectual act and power, for it 
conditions all the special acts and cognitions of which the intellect is capable. 

$ 259. 9. The immediate successor of Kant was J. G. Fichte, 
J. G. Fichte. whose system was proposed as a modification and improvement of 
that which was taught in the Critique of the Pure Reason. Fichte 
derived all knowledge, — the materials as well as the forms, the a posteriori and the 
a priori, — from the activity of the Ego. Every thing which the mind knows, being 
as well as relations, so far as it is known, is the work of the Ego, and is evolved 
from its own creative activity. 

So far as the categories of thought are concerned, Fichte endeavors to show that 
each one of them is necessarily involved in the several concrete creative acts by 
which the Ego constructs for itself the known universe. Its first act is to affirm 
its own being. But in this it must apply and evolve the law or relation of iden- 
tity, A=A. Its second act is to affirm the non-Ego. But this in like manner in- 
volves the law of contradiction, (A) is not (non-A). The third is to recognize the 
indivisible Ego as opposed to a divisible non-Ego. This involves the reciprocal 
activity of each on the other, and this implies the relation of Causative efficiency. 
The other relations are all evolved in a similar way by the productive activity of 
the Ego, together with the non-Ego which this activity calls forth. Time and 
«pace, substance and attribute, reality, possibility and necessity, etc., etc., are all ac- 
sounted for by the creative activity of the Ego, as it proceeds from the simpler to 
the more complex processes and products of human knowledge. 

\ 260. 10. Schelling followed Fichte — by the effort to mediate 

Schelling's between him and Kant — so far as to provide for a common origi- 
eo-ories e ca * nation and relationship for the subjective and objective. His in- 
tellectual intuition recognizes at first the indifference of both, from 
which it develops as correspondent to one another the forms of thought and the 
forms of being. The authority for the categories in this double application must 
be in that intuition which affirms them to be common to the two. In his later 
philosophy, which was modified to avoid and displace the logical idealism of 
Hegel, Schelling assumes the reality of concrete and actual being, and teaches the 



§ 262. THEORIES OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 445 

mind's competence to originate and affirm necessary and original relations only in 
their application to, and by occasion of supposed concrete knowledge. For this 
reason he asserted for these a priori relations and for philosophy itself, what he 
called only a negative value. 

$ 261. 11. Hegel substituted thought for Schelling's intellectual 
intuition, i. e., that mental activity which produces and is con- Hegel's theory 
cerned with the concept or logical notion ; but he made a fatal mis- thought, 
take in conceiving that thought, viz., abstract thinking, could be ex- 
plained independently of concrete knowledge and actual being, and that the for- 
mer could explain the latter by the relations of pure or abstract thought. He was 
therefore compelled, by logical consistency, to endeavor to evolve and explain 
every form of actual being by the development or evolution of the notion from 
within itself. 

The categories or the original and necessary relations of knowledge, according 
to Hegel, are all the relations which are necessarily evolved in the process by which 
simple, i. e., abstract being is developed into the several forms of thought and ex- 
istence, and through them all, till the absolute is attained, t. e., till the process is 
complete and with it the cycle of the original relations or categories which are re- 
quired for its evolution. 

$ 262. 12. According to Herbart, some of the categories are the 
products of the action and reaction of ideas. They are not the ory . 
necessary laws or forms of the mind's knowledge, but are the 
growth and result of its psychological functions as determined by the laws which 
govern the formation and mutual action of the results of the impressions made 
upon the soul by matter, and the soul's reaction against them. These results are 
perceptions or representations. Concepts, or general notions, arise only when a 
number of similar objects have been perceived. These different elements in their 
struggle for reappearance crowd one another out of view, and only those are ap- 
parent which, being alike, reinforce one another, and so survive the struggle. The 
conceptions of Space and Time are series of reproduced objects, the parts of 
which are more or less indistinct, as they ^ tand related to the here and the now. A 
thing or being and its attributes, is either an original whole analyzed into its con- 
stituent parts, giving the attribute of quality, or a whole with its attendant series 
of time and space accompaniments giving the attribute of quantity. The suc- 
cessful connection of these attendant parts or accessory series is affirmation — the 
unsuccessful is negation : both these involve the two corresponding forms of 
judgment or the apprehension of relations. 

The relations of substance to attributes and of cause and effect are inconsistent 
with the logical laws of identity and contradiction, which are assumed by Herbart 
to be original and independent laws of thought. To remove these inconsistencies 
is the object of his metaphysical system. This he essays to do by " the method of 
relations." It would seem that the logical laws are the only categories, properly 
considered, which Herbart accepts, for the reason that these logical criteria are 
applied by him as the fixed rules and original measures by which every other re- 
lation is tried and tested. 



446 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§263. 



CHAPTEK IIL 



FORMAL RELATIONS OR CATEGORIES. 

§ 263. Following the classification of categories 
of beiag. eg0r7 or intuitions which we have adopted and explained 
(§ 250), we begin with those which we have defined 
as formal. These are also called Logical, for the reason that Logic 
has to do with the concept as such, i, e., the pure concept and its 
necessary relations. The concept as such consists of those elements, 
and those only, that must be conceived as present in every object 
when thought of. That is, it must embrace those elements only 
which are common to every such object, whether it is a real 
or an imagined being. These elements, while they belong to 
things as well as to concepts, are yet essential to the concept 
and the other entities of pure logic, and hence are referred pre- 
eminently to the power of thought. 

We begin with being. This will be readily acknowledged to 
be the most extensively applied of all the concepts, and there- 
fore fundamental. Everything which we know, we know to 
exist. To know is impossible and inconceivable, if it does not 
involve the certainty that that which is known, exists or is. 
Being is the correlate of knowledge. 

Hence, this concept is apparently fundamental to 
funSneiS. 86 an others. It belongs to every object with which the 
mind has to do in knowledge, and it belongs to each 
with equal propriety — to Him whom we call, in the poverty of 
our language, the Being of beings, and to the most transient and 
trivial creation of the humblest of His creatures ; to the universe 
in the most comprehensive meaning of the term, and to the ma- 
thematical point, which is the product of the thought of a 
moment. 

We sometimes dignify the being which is independent and per- 
manent with the assertion that this only or truly has being, or 
only and truly is ; but this is by a metaphor only, and does not 
in the least affect the proper import of the term or of the con- 
cept for which it stands. The jiositive existence of the object, but 
neither its dignity nor its duration, is expressed by the word. 



§ 265. FORMAL RELATIONS OR CATEGORIES. 447 

§ 264. Being is the most abstract of all possible 

. „ i • t • i Tho most ? - b - 

concepts. After every property or relation which we straetofaiitha 

know of an object is set aside from any existing 
thought or thing, there remains the affirmation ; this is. This re- 
sulting concept cannot be thought away. For this reason it is 
called logically the first or the most elementary of all concepts. 
As it is the last which we reach by analysis, it is the first with 
which our synthesis begins. 

Psychologically, the knowledge of being in the concrete, pre- 
cedes that of being in the abstract. We know individual beings 
before we know being as a concept. 

Logically, or, more properly, metaphysically, the concept of being 
is the first and most fundamental of all the concepts, because it 
is the most extensively applied, and is the highest of our gen- 
eralizations (§ 249). But it cannot be understood as a concept, 
except by means of individual objects. To begin with the con- 
cept in the abstract, excluding that knowledge which interprets 
and makes it clear, is literally to begin with nothing. To at- 
tempt to develop from it actual being, is to give an example by 
failure, of the truth, ex nihilo nihil jit ! Hegel begins the de- 
velopment and explanation of our real knowledge with the con- 
cept of being in the abstract, and seeks to construct and develop 
from this the conception and knowledge of real existence, and 
the relations which it involves. In doing this, he is obliged to 
interpret his meaning by a tacit assumption of that which he 
formally ignores and denies — i. e., to draw upon direct and pre- 
sented knowledge for the interpretation of the conceptions and 
relations which he professes to develop and account for. The at- 
tempt is vain ; the method is false ; the solution is impossible. 

The knowledge of being is expressed by judgments or proposi- 
tions, the subjects of which are known individually. We tacitly 
assert or think of every such object; it,or this, is or exists. From 
these we generalize the concept — being. Being or existence is 
not, however, an attribute or a relation, though it is conceived or 
treated as such when it is thus generalized. It is obvious that 
being must be assumed in order that an attribute or relation may 
be known. 

§ 265. Being cannot be defined — i. e., resolved into * 8 indefinable 

° ° ' and lndeteriul' 

&ny more elementary constituents. It can be de- nate - 



*48 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



265. 



scribed, however, by the conditions or circumstances under 
which it is present to the mind : When we ask. What is being ? 
we cannot answer in the way of definition. But inasmuch afc 
whenever we know we apprehend being, by referring to the act 
of knowing we understand, though we cannot define, the import 
of the concept; i. e., we explain the concept, being, by the acf 
which involves and supposes it. 

It was said (§ 196) that all concepts are founded on attributes 
or relations generalized, and that the only difference between 
nouns and adjectives arises from their use and not their meaning; 
the same content being present in every case — a content of 
attributes only. How, then, it might be urged, is it possible 
that there should be any concept of being at all, if being is not 
only not an attribute, but is the direct contrast of an attribute 
and must be supposed to make an attribute conceivable or pos- 
sible ? This inquiry has in part been answered. In order to be 
turned into a concept, being is treated as an attribute ; it is 
predicated of the individuals to which it belongs and thus is 
made to suggest itself as essential to any relation. It is w r orthy of 
notice also that some fixed permanent attribute as of standing, 
etc., is usually selected to image or represent beingness. 

Simple being is a concept wholly indeterminate. It stands for 
itself and for nothing besides. It is supposed in every other. It 
must be assumed to determine every other. We must begin w\th 
being, before we can add a single characteristic to make it defi- 
nite. 

This is what Hegel had in mind in his assertion : Being or 
entity is equal to nothing, i. e., it is equivalent to a notion without 
content. As an abstract conception, it has no relations to any 
other concept, and consequently no attributes ; it is wholly un- 
defined. "Being, the undetermined, immediate object of know- 
ledge, is in fact nothing, no more nor less. Nothing is [has] the 
same determination, or rather, absence of determination with r 
and, for that reason, is equivalent to, simple entity. Hegel, {Logic, 
vol. i.,p. 22;Encyc, p. 406.) 

But though being, as a concept, and in its relation to other 
concepts, is indeterminate, it is not without signification. Tin 
concept is taken from and affirmed of and interpreted by, indivi 
dual beings which we actually know by direct knowledge. 



§ 266. FORMAL RELATIONS OR CATEGORIES. 413 

§ 266. From being we pass to relation ; both ex- 
istence and relationship being involved in the act of Diyereity^and 
knowing. By relations, individual objects, as well as sinuUnty ' 
concepts, are distinguished and connected. But relationship in- 
volves diversity in the concept produced, and negation as the 
judgment by which diversity is affirmed. 

Two entities — i. e., objects apprehended — are essential to the 
apprehension of a connecting relation. But if the two are known 
they must be distinguished — i. e., known as different from each 
other, in order that they may be again connected. 

It follows that the relation which is the most extensive of all 
others, is the relation of diversity or difference. 

In every act and object of knowledge two relations are sup- 
posed, those of diversity and of similarity. If there is more than 
one concrete Being, one is diverse from the other. If both are 
alike Beings, i. e., are comprehended under the concept Being, 
they must be alike at least in that they are both knowable. In 
brief, diversity and similarity — i. e., logical or formal sameness — ■ 
are everywhere present. This truth is asserted in the proposi- 
tion, that every act of knowledge is at once an act of analysis 
and of synthesis. In every single act of knowledge we separate 
— i. e. y distinguish — in order that we may combine. We can 
only unite so far as we separate, and we unite by similarity. 

The relation of difference or diversity is expressed by the 
proposition, this being is not that. A is not B, or B is not A ; 
the color is not the taste, the taste is not the color ; the pictured 
moon is not the mind ; the mind is not the moon which it pictures. 
I am not the object seen or tasted, etc., etc. 

It will be remembered that these propositions are all individual propositions, and 
that none of them are or can be general. The individual goes before the general 
in these propositions of relations, as in all others. 

From the recognition and affirmation of relations in general are 

evolved what are called relative concepts or notions. From the Relative no- 
,. ... ... ., , x . „ ,. ., tlons. Negative 

negative proposition which expresses the relation of diversity are notions. 

produced what are termed negative concepts. 

No sooner is A distinguished from B, than we can apply to it the negative 

notion of not-B. In the same way reciprocally, the notion not-A can be affirmed 

of B. These two notions are purely relative. The whole content or import 

wnich they express, is limited to the single relation in which they stand to the 

other object, which other object, A or B, as the oaee may be, is supposed to be 

positively known. 



450 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 267. 

In like manner, other relative notions may be formed, as if we take a substance 
and it puts us to sleep, we conceive the unknown something which produces this 
sleep-making ; that is, we need know it no further than by its relation to this 
effect. The only notion which we have of it may be purely relative to the 
known effect. 

The negative relation, as indeed any relative notion, is at first apprehended as 
individual, and then generalized. No sooner is A pronounced to be not B, than 
we proceed to apply this to C, D, E, F, etc., as well as to A — indeed, to all objects 
except B itself. We need know nothing more of them than that they are, to be 
justified in classing them all as not-Bs, or in affirming of them the negative 
concept thus generalized. This is the ground of the division of all real and 
conceivable things by dichotomy, as it is called. 

It will be observed, however, that negation expresses a relation between two 
actual beings, or two beings treated or conceived as real. It supposes two positives 
known or conceived, each of which is thought as related negatively to the other. 

The concept nothing — nonentity — is a purely relative concept. All being or 
entities, whether real or imaginary, are grouped under the most general of all 
concepts. To this is attached the relation of negation. What is expressed, is 
the proposition that the concept is exhaustive, and that it is impossible to con- 
ceive or believe in any thing beside. By a fiction of speech and of thought this 
proposition is contracted into the concept nothing — nonentity — as though there 
were a really existing object negatively related to being. To form it we group 
all known or knowable objects under the general concept of being and attaching 
to this the negative particle, make no<-being=no thing==nothing. 

When Hegel asserts that the concept being or entity equals nothing in its import, 
he has in mind that it is a concept which cannot be analyzed into any constituent 
concept or thought element : it is therefore unrelated to any other ; it is undeter- 
mined : it has no notional or formal content. So far from being true that this 
concept has no import, no concept has an import so extensive. Its import is 
reached in the various forms of direct knowledge, which furnish the material and 
meaning to every concept, and a reference to which is supposed every time the 
concept being is used. 

Hegel reasons that, because the concept being is the summum genus among con- 
cepts, it is the originator of all other concepts : not only so, but by the law of 
self-evolution, it is the originator of things or actual beings. The failure of the 
attempt, and the absurdity of the theory on which it rests is manifest when the 
effort is made to cross over from the notion world to the real world ; when the 
effort is essayed to evolve time and space, matter and spirit from concepts only. 
The effort seems to be successful only because the real world with its relations is 
ever ready at hand behind the concept world which symbolizes it, to furnish the 
signification which is required. Real being, and real relations are very easily 
confounded with the generalized concepts of the same. The two are easily inter- 
changed, and it is by a kind of intellectual juggling or slight-of-hand that any 
success appears to be attained, or any conviction is produced. 

sutatance and § 26 ?. Diversity or negation is applied to a being 
maUy Ute con- ^ distinguished from its relations, to one relation as 
ceived - distinguished from another relation, and also to on$ 



§ 267. FORMAL RELATIONS OR CATEGORIES. 451 

being as distinguished from another by means of its relations. 
We distinguish or separate objects from one another whether 
material or spiritual : first, in real knowledge,by intuition or direct 
inspection; next, in thought knowledge, by employing relations for 
this purpose, and especially those similar relations by which 
beings are grouped under concepts. 

This introduces us to the category of substance and attribute, so 
far as it is merely formal. Whenever a being is thought of, i. e., 
is distinguished from another being by the number and the 
extent of its relations, then we have the relation of substance and 
attribute in its pure or abstract form. A substance formally con- 
ceived is a being distinguished by certain relations. An attribute 
§3 one of the relations which thus distinguishes a being. 

Every concept whenever it is complex, as having a de- 
finite content, implies the relation of a whole constituted of and 
separable into parts. This implies the relation of more or less. 
The extent of a concept, as applicable to more or fewer objects, 
and therefore as higher or lower, implies the same relation. The 
relations of wholes and parts and of greater or less are properly 
formal relations, as involved in the very nature of the concept. 
They are relations of formal or logical quantity, which is dis- 
tinguished from mathematical quantity by characteristics subse- 
quently explained. 

The relation of diversity with its several applications suggests 
the relation of identity. In affirming that A is not B, or is 
diverse from B, we imply that A is identical with itself. 
That the mind comes to the distinct recognition of this relation 
at an early period of its development, and makes frequent appli- 
cation of it afterwards, is too obvious to need confirmation. 
That the relation is original, and is intuitively discerned, is 
equally clear. 

If a concept is known as identical, it is of course implied that 
the individual beings to which it belongs have similar relations in 
common. These individuals cannot be distinguished, except by 
means of the relations of time and space, which are conceivable 
as possible of either, but not of both together. One concept is 
distinguished from another by the relations which make the con- 
tent and determine the extent of the one and the other. 

Many hold, that the first object to which identity is applied 



452 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 268. 

is the soul itself, as distinguished from the diverse states of 
which it is conscious. As the Ego distinguishes itself from its 
changing states, it knows that the states are varying, but the Ego 
is the same. In doing so, it must compare itself at one time with 
itself at another, or itself in one state with itself in another. 

Identity again may be affirmed of a material object, as of a 
house, a ship, a tree, or a horse. In such cases the objects are 
perceived at different times at least, and are often changed in 
form, appearance and properties. The test or standard of 
identity may be real and natural, or it may be conventional and 
factitious. But the relation itself is not thereby altered. 

Identity may also be applied to a purely mental product. 
Often it is interchanged with similarity, when it is applied to a 
concept, e. g., I have a similar image of the same object which I 
previously imagined or perceived. It is not necessary that the 
concept should be formed by all men from the same individuals, 
but it is meant that the similarity between the individual objects 
is so perfect that one individual may be substituted for another 
in forming it, and that it may be applied to one as freely and as 
properly as to another. When it is thus applied it concerns the 
relations of content and extent, and signifies that the same defini- 
tions and divisions are applicable in every case. 

§ 268. To guard against using concepts in different 
om tf identity, senses in any of the processes of thought, the law of 
identity, the law of contradiction and the law of excluded 
middle are set forth as the three fundamental laws of thought, i. e., 
of formal thought. These respect the identity and diversity of con- 
cepts only. They are the axioms of logical thinking, but not neces- 
sarily the rules for every form and mode of knowledge. They are 
such practical rules as have been found necessary from the dangers 
to which men are exposed from the various forms of expression in 
which concepts and their relations are phrased. 

The law of identity is designed to avoid the twofold danger of 
supposing, on the one hand, because the diction is altered, that 
the concepts, propositions, and reasonings are changed, or on the 
other, that, because the phraseology is similar, the meaning is the 
same. 

Complex concepts only can be tried and tested by this law; 
and these can be tested both in their content and extent. The 



§ ^68. FORMAL RELATIONS OR CATEGORIES. 453 

law applied to the content asserts that a concept is, for purposes 
of logic, the same with the sum of its constituting elements : 
A= (a, b, c, d, aud e) ; i. e., all these being taken together, the 
one is convertible with the other. When applied to the relation 
of extent, it asserts that the concept as genus is identical with 
the total of its contained species or subordinate parts. To make 
the logical law of identity the mere meaningless truism, — A is 
A, i. e., that a concept in the same form of diction is identical 
with itself, — is inept and absurd. 

The logical axiom or law of contradiction : A is not not- A, is 
only a generalized application of the intuition of difference to any 
concept whatever, taken in both extent and content. A thiug or 
a concept is not another, it is not any one of the things or con- 
cepts from which it differs, nor all of them united. This truth, 
expressed as a rule, lequires that the concept "should never be 
confounded with or substituted for either." 

The law of excluded middle is, every B is either A or not- A. 
This is another application of the intuitions of difference and 
identity when generalized. When A has been distinguished from 
not- A, it is at once discerned that these two concepts divide the 
extent of all conceivable existences into two classes. This truth 
is then stated as a principle ; which is ready to be used as a law 
whenever it is required to guard or correct our thinking. 

Much evil has resulted from the error of taking these three 
logical laws as the original and the only laws of our knowledge. 
It was entirely natural for philosophers who were practiced in the 
schools of formal logic to suppose that everything which man be- 
lieves to be true could be demonstrated by the methods and after 
the principles of the syllogism. The tenacity with which this 
persuasion has been adhered to is most remarkable in the history 
of all systems and schools of thought. For a long period after 
the revival of philosophy it seemed that man would never cease 
to attempt to give a logical demonstration for the very axioms 
and principles on which all demonstration must rest. Logical 
proof was required for all knowledge, for the belief in a material 
world, for our confidence in memory, for the distinction between the 
facts of experience and the illusions of the imagination ; in short, 
for everything known or believed by man, — and to logical proof 
these three laws of thought were assumed as the axioms. Hea^e, 



454 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 269. 

the attempt was persistently made to found upon these laws the whole 
structure of human knowledge, and to deduce or demonstrate from 
them, the validity of this knowledge in all its forms and appli. 
cations. 



CHAPTER IV. 

MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS; TIME AND SPACE. 

f We proceed to consider the mathematical categories ; or those 
relations which involve the belief in time and space. These re- 
lations are of the most extensive application. They all must in a 
sense be recognized in every act of consciousness and perception. 
By means of these, material and spiritual objects are parted and 
united, are individualized and generalized. They suggest the 
space and time which are infinite and absolute — the correlates of 
limited time and limited space. In order to relieve the treatment 
of the subject as much as possible, we will consider them first 
under their more familiar aspects and relations, and afterwards 
in those which are more recondite and difficult. We begin with 

I. Extension as given in Sense-Perception ; or the relations of 
matter which introduce and require the knowledge of Space. 

§ 269. All matter is known as extended. The 
Development beings or objects of which we become cognizant in 
rliationsTex- the use of the muscular and sensorial apparatus are 
tension. extended. The percepts and things which are pre- 

sented to the sensorium as eye and ear and hand, are perceived 
as extended. 

It is not meant that this extension in one or all of its dimen- 
sions is known at first as separable from the matter to which it 
pertains and of which it is affirmed ; but as belonging to matter 
and affirmable of it. All extended objects are known as ex- 
tended, at least in two dimensions. We cannot conceive the eye 
and the hand to re3t upon or to move along any so-called object 
without the apprehension of an extended surface. A ball or 
cube when followed by the eye or grasped by the hand is known 
to return upon itself, and both are sooner or later known as ex- 



§ 270. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS I TIME AND SPACE. 453 

tended in three dimensions or directions, i. e., as high, broad, and 
deep. This extension is first known as outer, i. e., as enclosing 
matter. But when the child peeps into a box, or surveys from 
within, the walls, floor and ceiling of the apartment with which 
it is familiar, it distinguishes the surfaces which are inner or 
enclosed by matter, from those which are outer and enclose matter. 

After the process of perception is complete by a synthesis of 
percepts and their relations, the mind proceeds to analyze these 
elements, and to think of them separately from any single sub- 
stance. But after disposing of all the qualities apprehended by 
sense-perception, it still finds a residuum in the relations belong- 
ing to the inner and outer surfaces of matter as already 
described. The hand experiments upon these surfaces, and finds 
them rough or smooth, etc. The eye discerns them as variously 
colored, as light or dark, etc. But no one of the senses finds what 
we call their extension. There is no sense-perception to which 
this is appropriate, and over against which this may be set as a 
quality. Moreover, this very property involves the recognition of 
a void, to which it is also conceived to have constant relation. 

What is this void which we call space ? What is that property 
in matter which requires the recognition of space ? We may find 
further aid in answering these questions, if we consider first the 
attributes and relations which involve the kindred questions in 
respect to time. 

II. Of Time as apprehended in consciousness ; or, the relations 
of events which introduce and involve the knowledge of Time. 

§ 270. Every psychical act or state, whether appre- 
hended more or less distinctly as a part of the whole r Jiated° n to h thI 
series; and the entire series viewed as an unbroken actsofthesoul - 
whole, are known as continuing or enduring. 

How soon, or whether it is by the gradual discipline or the in- 
stant application of the powers that psychical phenomena are 
separated into distinct events, we need not inquire. Whenever 
they are distinguished, the whole and the parts are known as 
continuous or enduring. An act that is literally instantaneous, 
a psychical state beginning and occupying no time at all, is abso- 
lutely inconceivable. What we call instants are not timeless, but 
the least knowable or appreciable portions of time. As every ob- 
ject of sense-perception — whether many as one, or one of many 



456 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 270. 

— must be known as extended, so it is with the phenomena of 
consciousness. Continuance, or duration,belongs to each and to all. 

But there are two distinct classes of psychical objects given to 
consciousness ; first, the energy of the ego by which it manifests 
its coutinued, unbroken, and identical life ; and second, the special 
activities which change every instant. As the subject of chang- 
ing activities — the soul knows itself to be living and acting contin- 
uously. It also knows itself as acting and suffering in states that 
change as continuously. Some of these states may seem also to 
coincide with others, as one continuous or successively repeated 
act of knowledge may run side by side with two or more diverse 
states of feeling. 

Upon this continually existing and proceeding life of the soul, 
all its special activities and states are projected, as it were ; as one 
portion of extended matter is perceived over against the back- 
ground of other matter more extended than itself. These activi- 
ties thus connected are known to exist in a series involving the 
relations between one another of now, before, and after. These 
relations are applied first of all to the individual activities of the 
soul. But just as we speak of portions of matter as here, there ; 
before, behind ; within, and without ; so we apply these time rela- 
tions to the states of the soul. As we find one portion of matter 
included by or including other portions, so we can cut off a single 
portion of the continuous life of the soul by voluntary or invol- 
untary effort, and contemplate those states which are included 
within, or are excluded from it. 

Time may be conceived as void of psychical phenomena ; as 
space is void of material beings and acts. Not that time can be 
absolutely void, but portions of the soul's existence can be 
considered as such, in the sense explained. But it is not at all 
essential to the knowledge of events in the relations of time, 
that time should be distinctly conceived as void. We can know 
events as past, present, and future, by considering each of them 
as successive phenomena of the continued life of the soul. 

We have to do thus far only with time-relations in the con- 
crete, and as given in consciousness. By consciousness as here 
used it is obvious we do not intend merely the power or the act 
by which the soul knows its own states as present and imme- 
diate. In this sense we cannot be conscious of duration. Wa 



§ 271. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS: TIME AND SPACE. 457 

must include some use of the representative power in respect to 
past and future events, as well as the belief that what is rep- 
resented, was or will be actual. Consciousness must be enlarged 
to this extent of meaning, before it can connect objects in the re- 
lations of time. 

III. Of the mutual relations of Extended and Enduring objects. 

§ 271. Material objects, as we have seen, .are ap- 
prehended by sense-perception as extended. Spiritual cems e extended 
acts and states are known in consciousness as endur- objects together! 
ing. But sense-perception and consciousness occur 
in fact, as two elements in the same psychical energy or state. 
As a consequence, the relations of extension and duration are 
intimate and interchangeable, and the conceptions and language 
originally derived from and appropriate to the one, are appro- 
priated to the other. 

First : The relations of time are transferred from the activi- 
ties and phenomena of spirit, to the activities and phenomena of 
matter. 

Duration or continuance is, as we have seen, originally dis- 
cerned of the activities and phenomena of the spirit. To these 
the relations of time are directly and properly applied. When 
these relations are affirmed of more than one object, whether of 
matter or spirit, the intervention of the memory of the observer 
is required. We cannot say of the trotting of a horse, of the 
flight of a bullet, or of any other motion, that it continued so 
many seconds or minutes, without supposing the observer who 
is all the while looking on, to translate the objects really taking 
place into objects as perceived by himself i. e., into results of acts oj 
his own, each enduring so much time. Material acts or phenom- 
ena must be connected by the soul's subjective activity that 
they may be recalled. Moreover, whatever may take place in 
the series of objective or material acts; that which is unobserved 
is totally omitted in the estimate of time : to the mind as enduring 
it is, as though it had not been at all. The relation of time 
can neither be applied, nor thought of as applied to any material 
acts or events, except through the medium of the duration of 
some person who has first applied to them his own spiritual ex- 
periences either in fact or imagination. Every such applica- 
tion, when fully translated or explicated, is made as follows 
20 



458 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§271. 



While 1 was thinking or observing for so long a time the, horse 
trotted or the bullet sped for the same space of time. 

Second : But though duration, as a spiritual experience, is the 
ultimate standard or measure ; the actual measures of the dura- 
tion even of spiritual phenomena, — are taken from the objective 
or material world. The reason is obvious. Any standard 
furnished from individual and spiritual experience must be so 
indeterminate to one's self as to be useless, and, moreover, must 
be wholly inaccessible to every one besides. Though, in our ulti- 
mate analysis, we say to ourselves, " While I was thinking and 
feeling so and so, the pendulum vibrated, the horse ran, the 
bullet sped so or so long," yet it is practically impossible for us to 
fix and render familiar any individual or often repeated series of 
thoughts and feelings, so as to use it as a standard even for our- 
selves. Even if we could do this for ourselves, we could not 
bring it within the reach and use of others. But two individuals, 
and a great number of individuals, can observe the same 
vibrating pendulum, the same advancing and retreating shadow 
on the dial, or the same rising and setting sun, and can use 
these as standards to measure all phenomena whether internal 
or external. 

Third : the language of duration is taken from material and 
extended objects, for a similar reason. In fact and from neces 
sity, all the relations of time are expressed in terms originally 
appropriate to material objects, and the relations of extension 
which they involve. Long, short, before, after, etc., were first 
applied to material objects, and from them transferred to the re- 
lations of time. As will be seen hereafter, this is but a single 
example of the necessity by which the language and terms of 
every kind that are applied to spirit and its relations must be de- 
rived from space-objects and space-relations. 

Material objects are not only known to be extended, but as 
measuring one another, i. e., as susceptible of quantity. Quan- 
tity supposes the inquiry, How much? How many? or, How great? 
It has for its answer, So much, So many, So large — referring at 
once to some object which as a unit or standard measures a 
whole. The extended material universe, as at first vaguely and 
confusedly conceived, is unbroken, having only superficial exten- 
sion. By the process of sense-perception it is soon broken into 



§ 272. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS : TIME AND SPACE. 459 

separate objects, each of which may be compared with the whole, 
in respect to breadth and the other relations. 

As extended objects divide and measure one another, so one or 
more separate acts or states of the soul which follow one another 
in a series, may be contemplated as dividing, and yet making up 
this whole, the whole of time being constituted by the continued 
activity of the soul during these its different acts. Measure in the 
general sense, as applied to spirit objects and material objects, im- 
plies the relation of whole and parts. This relation, as we have 
seen, is involved in the analysis and synthesis of sense-perception, 
consciousness, representation, and thought, etc., and is essential to 
the very process and product of knowledge in every form, and 
hence belongs among the formal relations. Measure, in the 
more exact sense, we need not say, supposes number. 

IV. Of extended and enduring objects as Imaged or repre- 
sented: or, space and time objects as enlarged and measured by the 
Imagination. 

§ 272. Only a small portion of the material uni- 

11-1777 i • i Limitations of 

verse is apprehended through the senses by any single sense-percep- 
act of the mind. The hand can cognize an object of 
only equal extent with itself. The eye has a far wider, but still 
a very limited range. All beyond either, is apprehended and 
measured by the representative power. Even within the limits 
to which the eye reaches, and upon those very objects which the 
eye seems to command, the representative power is largely em- 
ployed in estimating extent in the dimensions of distance and 
size. 

That which i? before the eye is the utmost which the eye can 
in any sense be said to perceive, and much even of this extent is 
estimated by the eye of the mind. The objects within the reach of 
the hand and the direct inspection of the eye, we measure by select- 
ing some one as a unit, in the manner explained. Those beyond 
these bounds, we measure in a similar way, with this difierencr 
only, that the material measured, and the standard by which it 
is measured, are furnished by the imagination only, working 
upon the suggestions or occasions which percerved objects furnish. 
We seem to perceive the real height of the lofty tree that shoots 
up from the horizon against the sky, while it is but a mote to the 
eye; we think we perceive the width of the stream that thread* 



460 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 273. 

the distant meadow with a silvery line, but these estimates are 
possible only by the aid of the picture-making power, that brings 
its objects by the side of the tree under which we stand, or upon 
the margin of the stream where we sit. We have already learned, 
in considering the acquired perceptions, that it is only by the aid 
of the imagination that we supply the defects of the senses, and 
interpret their indications. 

§ 273. We are dependent upon the imagination 
we use the im- alone for our estimates of distance and size beyond 

agination. g J 

the limits of actual perception. These estimates vary 
with the actual knowledge which we have gained of such objects 
by inspection and can recall by the memory, and with the 
practice which results from the frequent application of defi- 
nite standards by the representative power. The adult surpasses 
the child immeasurably in this power. The man of various 
observation and of disciplined powers excels the man of limited 
knowledge and of untrained habits ; the modern, instructed and 
taught as he is, presents a very striking contrast to the wisest 
of the ancients. 

A child between three and four years old, of no inferior intelli- 
gence, and of good opportunities for instruction and thought, was 
once asked how far distant the sun sets, and answered promptly, 
In the next field. This child had walked and driven for miles 
in every direction from its home, and would have remem- 
bered, if prompted by leading questions, that all the roadways 
along which it had gone were bordered by adjacent houses, fields, 
and gardens, like those within sight, but it had never learned 
to combine these objects by imagination or to measure such a 
whole by the unit of a familiar standard so as to estimate 
their relative dimensions. 

The conceptions and estimates of the uncultivated man are very 
like those of the immature child, especially if such a man is con- 
fined by his habits of life to a single narrow valley or a limited 
range of travel. Every thing beyond these limits is confused and 
unmeasured. The horizon of his actual perceptions, or the slightly 
enlarged horizon of his expeditions for hunting and war, includes all 
that he knows or soberly imagines. He may at times fill the blank 
vacuity beyond, with objects that are monstrous, horrid, and gro- 
tesque — objects that are terrific to his unintelligent fears, or are 



§ 274. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS : TIME AND SPACE. 461 

bewildering to his insane expectations ; but be fixes on few or none 
which hold definite or rational relations to others as measures or 
bounds. The spatial world formed by both child and savage, ia 
well represented by the rude maps of the early geographers, in 
which the countries actually traversed are drawn with a certain 
degree of definiteness, though the near is out of all proportion to 
the remote ; but the regions beyond are a blank bounded by an un- 
certain line, along which uncouth monsters are placed, or the un- 
known and measureless water or desert shuts in the picture. 

The child and savage neither think nor care how large are the 
sun and the stars, or how many are the steps, the miles, or 
leagues, which would be required to reach them. In this way, 
and in this only, can we explain the very inadequate conceptions 
on these subjects which the early astronomers accepted. 

§ 274. Our estimates of time-objects, like those of 
space-objects, are largely the work of the representa- time- objects 
tive faculty. The passing and present acts and 
states of our own spirits, and the coincident operations and phe- 
nomena of the material world, are the only time objects of which 
we have direct cognizance. Past objects are gone. Future 
objects do not yet exist. Present objects alone directly confront 
the mind. The past must be recalled by memory, the future 
must be anticipated in the imagination, i. e., both must be re-pre- 
sented to the mind, so as with the present to complete the series', of 
time objects. 

To measure past events, we must be able to recall 

x Different ca- 

them in their order, so as to have before us the ma- parities in dif- 

ierent men. 

terial which we are to estimate. But men differ 
greatly in their capacity to revive past objects in their fulness and 
order. If the capacity to recall with success be possessed, time 
and effort must be added that any past series may be restored, so 
as to be estimated and measured. Some self-discipline and prac- 
tice are required that a measure may be prepared from our inner 
experience which shall be ready for use, and also that the same 
standard shall be uniformly applied. 

Differences in both these particulars in different 

± p t Differences in 

persons, and in the same persons at different times, the estimates 
account for the singular differences which are so no- 
torious in our estimates of time. No fact is more generally ac- 



462 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 274 

cepted, than that two series of events may occupy the same length of 
time as measured by the clock, and may seem to vary very greatly 
from one another as measured by the mind. If we are waiting 
impatiently for the arrival of a friend or a railway train ; or if 
we are listening to a tiresome conversation or a tedious lecture, 
the time seems very long. On the other hand, if the conversa- 
tion is interesting, or the pastime is absorbing, the time flies 
swiftly along. The child cannot believe that the hour has come 
which calls him from his play, to school or to bed. A trip by 
a steamer seems much longer than a trip by railway, when the 
time is the same. Each are sensibly shortened if the tedium is 
beguiled by spirited conversation. A week spent in the daily 
routine of regular employment, goes quickly by ; while a week 
of constant traveling, filled up by a rapid succession of exciting 
objects, often seems surprisingly long. The years of childhood 
glide slowly away. Every day and every month stretches to an 
interminable length, because our present enjoyment brings no 
disappointment, and because it stands between us and some 
future happiness which the mind is impatient to grasp. The 
years of our busy middle life slip hastily by, though we would 
fain delay their flight, because we are too busy to measure the 
passing years. 

The constructions and measurements of space and time which 
we have thus far considered, do not involve definite relations of 
number and magnitude. They are made for practical use and 
convenience, and require only general impressions of their time 
or space relations, or a ready reference to some familiar object or 
series as a standard of measurement. The mind judges the time 
spent in one occupation to be about as long as the time spent in 
another. * It took me about as long, or twice or half as long, as 
to do this or that familiar act. The distance from A to B is 
equal to the distance from C to D ; or it may be greater or less.' 
But when we say London is 3 or 4,000 miles from New York, or, 
the moon is 238,650 miles distant from the earth ; or, Washings 
ton and Napoleon were born and died so many years after the 
birth of our Lord, we apply measurements of a different char- 
acter, by means of definite standards of both space and time. 

It is interesting to notice in this connection, the history of the 
progress made by the human race in the standards of both time 



§ 275. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS: TIME AND SPACE. 463 

and space. The savage measures time by the budding of the oak, 
or the return and departure of birds or other game. By and 
by he marks the coming and going of the moon. Then rude de- 
vices like the clepsydra or the sand-dial are introduced. Last 
of all, the scientific observer employs the chronometer and the 
astronomical clock. 

So, in Standards of length, the mind has passed from the use 
of parts of the body, to measurements by the aid of the pendu- 
lum, or a portion of a circle of the earth, in order to find an 
accurate and trustworthy standard. 

Standards of both space and time are derived from whence stan- 

. • -i i • . i • i tit • i dards for both 

material objects, real or imagined. JNo images can be space and time 

p i o ,• i n i . are derived. 

formed of space or time as such, or of what are some- 
times called pure or empty space and time, but only of those ob- 
jects or events which hold a relation to either or to both. When 
these are pictured or imaged, they carry with them those rela- 
tions which the originals necessarily involve, and from which they 
cannot be severed in reality or in thought (§ 206). Thus, for a 
standard of space, the words yard, or rod, or mile, may call up 
some visible or tangible object most indefinitely pictured, or with 
the words, a minute, an hour, a day, or year, some series of events 
that have required a remembered period, or a part of such a 
period. Both these are pictured, not for their own sake, but for 
the sake of the time or space which they suggest. But these 
standards are concepts as well as images, and they cannot be com- 
pletely understood, even as images, till they are considered also 
as concepts. This leads us to consider 

V. Space and time objects as Generalized; or, the Concepts of 
the relations of objects to time and space. 

§ 275. Different individual objects and events hold 

o . T T . i • -i t ^ How the reIa " 

similar space and time relations, whether they are tions of space 

, and time ob- 

presented to sense and consciousness, or are represented jecto are gen- 
to the imagination. Space-objects may be alike in 
relative position, distance, form, size, etc., etc. Time objects may 
be alike in coexistence, in antecedence or subsequence, in their 
relative place in the order of occurrence, and in the intervals by 
which they are separated from one another or from any other 
event. The mutual relations which exist between time and space 
objects may also be common to any number of both classes. 



464 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 27 5i 

These relations are as readily generalized as are the attributes of 
material or spiritual things. It is as easy to generalize the forms 
and sizes of objects as their color or their taste ; the beforeness and 
afterness of a spiritual act, as any one of its qualities of knowledge 
or feeling. 

It is true there is this difference : these relations are in their 
nature incapable of being directly picturable to the imagination, 
like the properties of matter and spirit. In order to represent 
them at all, we must first picture the objects which hold them 
and so recall or suggest the relations themselves. But as concepts 
these generalized products are as easily formed and comprehended 
as any others. 

The words by which these relations are named and known, are 
as truly generic as the terms usually called common. All of 
them, it is true, have a more or less direct relation to an indivi- 
dual place and time, and seem therefore to be less general than 
the other appellatives ; but they are all capable of being equally 
attributed to many individual objects, and hence are as truly 
generic as they. We cannot say here, there, now, before and after, 
without implying that an individual observer occupying an indi- 
vidual place at an individual portion of time apprehends the 
object in this very relation, but it is possible that many objects at 
different times may be here or there, and v. v. now or then, before 
or after, i. e., at the same time, in different places. Hence 
the hereness and thereness, the noivness and thenness, the beforeness 
and afterness may be common to many individuals, and like sensible 
or spiritual qualities, may be affirmed or predicated of all. These 
objects may be grouped under, or classified by means of these 
general relations. The terms which denote these, take their place 
side by side with other common terms. Very many adjectives 
of time, as prior, later, present, past, and future, and of space, as 
long, short, high, deep, and broad, and of form, as circular, trian* 
gular, square, spherical, and conical, and of motion, as swift, sloiv, 
etc, will occur as belonging to these classes of words. All these 
classes of terms, like all other notion words, require some image 
to explain and illustrate them to the mind. But they are pecu- 
liar in this, that every object in nature and in spirit has some re- 
lation to time and space, and hence it is indifferent what one is 
cited to exemplify these universal relations. 



§ 276. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS I TIME AND SPACE. 465 

VI. Of Mathematical Quantity ; the process by which its concepts 
are evolved, and their relations to time and space. 

§ 276. These concepts naturally divide themselves 
into two classes, the concepts of magnitude and the con- nShematLai 
cepts of number, or the concepts which are respect- geoSScai. e 
ively related to space and time. We begin with those 
which imply the existence of space, as being the most easily ex- 
plained and understood ; i. e., with geometrical concepts or con- 
cepts of pure magnitude. 

Of these the most familiar are, the point, the line, the surface, 
the triangle, the square, the rectangle, the rhomboid, the solid, the 
cube, the sphere, etc. 

These terms stand for both images and concepts, in other words, 
for the products of the imagination and of thought. As images 
they are individual, as concepts they are general. 

The creative imagination idealizes not only the sensible and 
spiritual properties of these objects and phenomena, but it ideal- 
izes their space and time relations, § 181. It transforms the 
perceived edge with its actual breadth and ragged outline into 
the ideal line which has neither breadth nor undulation. It 
smooths the undulating surface into an evenly lying geometrical 
superficies. In the same way it refines the blunted corner of a 
die or cubical block into the mathematical point which is ideal- 
ized as having place but no extent in any direction. These rela- 
tions cannot themselves be thus imaged, but an object itself can 
be imaged with these relations thus idealized. Every such object 
is at first individual. But when the relation is generalized, we 
have a concept in place of an image, holding the same relation to 
the concrete and individual which belongs to any other concept. 
These concepts, like all other concepts, need to be imaged and il- 
lustrated by concrete objects. Only in this way can their import 
be understood, and their validity established. All geometrical 
conceptions are dependent upon the assumption of the space-rela- 
tions of objects. Without these space-relations they have no 
meaning. They presuppose the belief in these space-relations, as 
actually belonging to every material existence. They rest upon 
the belief in that absolute and infinite space which limited space 
presupposes and involves. Space, with the space-relations of ob- 
jects, is the ever-assumed background upon which all geometrical 

20* 



466 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §277. 

constructions are projected, and over against which all its pro 
cesses are interpreted. 

The reality and the validity of these conceptions 
Geometrical ° rest entirely upon the mind's own power to construct 
Quantity. an( j comp^^d them. The mind knows that it 

can construct these concepts, and knows what they are when con- 
structed. Geometry postulates that every student may make these 
concepts for himself. Its language is confident, " draw a line" 
" conceive or construct a plane," " think of a point." It lays the 
foundations for its reasonings in these postulates. It defines the 
meaning of these constructions by analyzing their relations to one 
another and to the space to which they all have a common rela- 
tion. It illustrates, or, as we usually say, demonstrates any rela- 
tions unknown before by referring to new constructions as exem- 
plified in some material substance, for example, in a cube or sphere, 
a cone, a dot, a chalk line, a rough surface on a blackboard or pa- 
per bounded by marks — which are no mathematical entities but 
serve to represent them and hold the attention to the constructions 
they represent. In the so-called demonstrations of Geometry one 
figure is supposed to be drawn in connection with another. Addi- 
tional figures are placed by the side of those with which we begin, 
or those already drawn are so divided as to enable the mind to 
bring into comparison figures that had been inaccessible and in- 
commensurable. As it is with the original and simpler definitions, 
or postulates, so is it with these complex constructions: space is 
supposed as the necessary attendant of each and of all, making 
possible the original constructions and the evolution of the new 
relations, which the mind discerns ultimately so soon as the requi- 
site figures and connecting lines have been prepared and com- 
bined. As has already been shown, § 229, the nerve and force of 
the geometrical demonstration rests more upon these successive 
intuitions than upon that element which is properly deductive. 
The concepts of § 277. The concepts of number are conditioned upon 
number. those relations of objects to time which are involved in 

the mind's continued activity in uniting them as parts into wholes. 
To number, some object must be selected which shall serve as 
the unit, i. c, which can be conveniently repeated as a recurring 
part of * "/hole of extended objects, or of a continued series of men 
tal states. 



§ 277. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS : TIME AND SPACE. 467 

These constituent parts are numbered when the mind connects 
each with the next b^ relations to its own activity in time. 
That with which it begins is called first. The next, when 
connected with the one taken first in time, is second. When ano- 
ther is thus connected, we have the third, and so on. Thus we 
count, or number. The act seems so simple as scarcely to admit 
or require explanation. It is obvious, however, that this act is 
only possible as we connect and contemplate objects in relation to 
a consecutive series of mental acts — that is, a series of mental acts 
following each other in time. 

We find, then, that the relation of number requires that ob- 
jects should first be connected as wholes and parts, and then 
contemplated in an arrangement which depends entirely upon 
the time-relations of the mind that views them. In other 
words, number depends upon those relations of time which we as- 
sume and know to be inseparable from the soul's own subjective 
activity. 

When a series of mental states is itself measured and num- 
bered, it must be remembered that in reflective consciousness this 
series itself is made objective to the mind. It is treated or 
viewed as though it were a series or whole of material objects. 
It is contemplated by a series of acts wholly subjective, involving 
as spiritual acts, the attribute of duration to themselves, and as 
successive, the relation of number in the objects which they unite 
and measure as wholes and parts. 

Whatever objects are numbered must be arranged in a continued 
series. This is possible only by the recognized relation of such 
objects to the mind's continued action in contemplating them. 
They must also be viewed reciprocally as wholes and parts, 
as the mind gathers the objects, when thus arranged, into a 
group, which it breaks into parts, reuniting these parts with 
each other at its will, and making its units larger or smaller 
as choice or chance directs. To both these relations time is 
the necessary condition, — to the continued subjective act of the 
mind in connecting objects into a series, and to the arranging of 
them as wholes and parts. 

In other words : To the act of counting, time must be assumed 
as both the subjective and objective condition ; but the relations by 
which objects are viewed or connected in the act of counting 



468 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§278. 






when abstracted, generalized, imaged and symbolized, are the 
relations of number. 

These relations can be applied to any objects whatever — to 
material objects, to spiritual objects, to acts or states of the mind 
itself, to the very acts of the mind in numbering ; in short, to any 
objects whatever, whether of direct or reflex cognition. Any 
series of objects can be used as the symbols or images of 
number. Thus a row of marbles, of kernels of grain, or a series 
of marks is usually selected. Such objects can be readily inter- 
changed, and they are chosen because they suggest little more than 
their numerical relations. For convenience of recording and re- 
calling the results of the processes of counting, arbitrary symbols 
have been selected. Thus, for two objects made one by a single 
addition, we employ the symbol of two marks, as in the Roman 
system, II, — later, the Arabic character 2 ; then III Rom., 3 Ar.; 
then instead of five marks we use V and 5 ; instead of four 
and six, V diminished by I going before and increased by I fol- 
lowing, or the Arabic characters 4 and 6, etc., etc. 

The principal concepts of number are the unit, the sum, the dif- 
ference, the multiple, the divisor and the ratio. 

These concepts cannot be defined so readily as they can be 
imaged and exemplified. To explain and illustrate their import 
we must go back to the several acts which represent them. 
Their meaning is originally taught and successively enforced by 
directions to select certain objects and proceed with them thus 
and thus, i. e., they rest upon postulates as truly as do the concepts 
of geometry. They assume that the mind can perform certain 
thought-processes which result in certain thought-products. The 
'psychological condition of these processes is the arrangement of ob- 
jects in a series, whether material or spiritual. Their logical condi- 
tion is the reality of time-relations, and of time itself as making these 
relations possible. That number depends upon and implies time, 
is obvious still further from the language which we continually use 
in our definitions and analyses. We say, add this so many times ; 
ten taken twice, i. e., two times ten, is twenty ; ten divided one time 
by two, or diminished once by three, is respectively five and seven. 
§ 278. The application of number to magnitude, oi 

The applica- _ . n -,. ■, n • 

tioa of number oi the concepts oi discrete to those oi continuous 
quantity, depends on the mutual relations of time and 



§ 279. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS I TIME AND SPACE. 40iJ 

Bpace objects which have already been explained, § 273. Wc 
tfikg any portion of space as a whole, we divide it into parts, we 
number these parts, we discern ratios between them. We ex- 
press the powers of curves by their equivalent formulae of lines 
as symbolized by numbers, etc., etc., creating all those conceptions 
and performing those processes which modern analysis has disco- 
vered and applied. 

VII. Of the application of mathematical conceptions to Material 
phenomena. 

§ 279. Pure Geometry deals only with ideal con- 
mathematics structions in ideal Space, and pure Arithmetic and 
applicable a to Algebra with ideal concepts conditioned on ideal 
materia! ob- Time> The possi b ilitv f applying these ideal crea- 
tions to material things and phenomena is explained 
by the fact that the concepts of number and magnitude are all 
generalized from the relations of concrete objects and events to 
both space and time. In the order of time and acquisition we 
know applied number and applied magnitude before we know 
pure number and pure magnitude. The latter are always ex- 
plained by the former. On the other hand, when we apply the 
concepts of pure mathematics to material substances, we find that 
those properties which were left out of view in forming them must 
be brought into view to modify our ideal inferences. In esti- 
mating the velocity of bodies we think of them only as capable 
of constant force and of accelerated motion. When we com- 
pare the results of our mathematical processes we find that 
they do not hold good of real phenomena, because they assumed 
what rarely if ever actually occurs, i. e., a force that is entirely 
constant and equable. Or perhaps, they omitted to recognize 
the increase of resistance consequent upon the increase of velocity. 
Thus in Mechanics, bodies are viewed as attracted by gravitation, 
as held together by cohesion, as impelled by a natural or artificial 
agency, as capable of both force and motion, as acquiring and losing 
velocity. For the purposes of this science gravitation is idealized 
as a constant force manifested in motion, the rapidity of which 
is inversely as the square of the distance. The nature of gravity 
itself as a material agent, is not considered, nor that of inertia; 
nor is the resistance of intervening media, but only the simple 
fact of motion, or a tendency to motion, with certain constant 



470 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§280. 



relations to space and time. In like manner cohesion is defined 
by the relations involved in the phenomena of motion. So the laws 
and properties of bodies in motion or in pressure are expressed by 
space and time relations. Whether bodies do in fact move or 
tend to move with regularity in these relations so that their 
motions can be measured or computed, are facts that can be 
ascertained by observation and induction only. 

For example : Newton's great laws in respect to the causes and 
continuance of force and motion are all generalized observations 
of facts of sense enforced on grounds of high probability. In 
other words, they are grounded upon induction. These laws or 
facts being assumed, we reason and compute with respect to the 
direction and rate of bodies in motion, with respect to the 
pressure and weight of bodies tending to move, and with respect 
to the results of bodies conspiring together in motion, just as we 
can reason or compute with respect to a sizeless or weightless 
point that is supposed to move in a breadthless line. That is, 
we apply to these material objects the concepts, relations and 
rules of the pure mathematics. But when we compare the results 
of our computations and demonstrations with bodies actually 
existing and phenomena actually occurring, we find that the two 
do not coincide. When we inquire why the prophecy given by our 
demonstration or computation is not fulfilled by the facts of the 
velocity, weight or pressure of the material bodies with which we 
come in contact, we account for the discrepancy by those 
elements or properties which we were obliged wholly or partially 
to disregard, such as inertia, resistance, friction, and the like. In 
many cases these are so unimportant that we subject them to no 
estimate, but take the result as exact enough for our purposes. 
In other cases, as in gunnery, astronomy, and the working of 
machinery, we seek to express the value and effect of these very 
elements in special mathematical formulae, and subject them to 
mathematical computations similar to those which we had applied 
to the prime forces. 

VIII. Of the relation of space and time concepts to Motion. 

§ 280. It is obvious that the space and time rela- 
relations, can tions of obj ects when thus generalized become universah 

bo still further r> • i • rr\i • • n 

generalized. oi a very wide extension. I he inquiry naturally sug- 
gests itself whether these relations can be generalized 



§280. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS ; TIME AND SPACE. 471 

still further, and so be included under relations of a still wider 
extension, as well as subordinated under one another. 

We find the medium of such generalization in the capacity of 
material objects for motion. Every material thing can be moved, 
The eye and the hand learn to separate the objects of perception 
from the great universe with which they are at first united, by 
the circumstance that they are moved and movable. The limit- 
ing surfaces, edges and corners of such objects are determined 
and traced out by the moving of the hand or the eye along or 
up to their several limits. Every act of motion brings with it 
the possible suggestion of some one of the relations of space. 

"We find, moreover, that there is not a single relation of space 
which cannot at once be brought before the mind, and, as it were, 
suggested by motion. Each one of these can, in a certain 
sense, be expressed and defined in terms and concepts of motion. 

Even the relations of position can be expressed by means of 
motion. The meaning of here and there, above and below, 
behind and before, are all definable by acts of motion — to and 
from, this way and that way, — joined with counter or resisting mo- 
tions, which stop their progress. When the question is asked of 
a child, What do you mean by any one of these terms ? he inva- 
riably replies by explanations by motion. He says, in effect, 
Move an object in this or that direction, and then arrest it, and 
it will be here or there, before or behind, above or below. 

The relations of time can also be generalized by means of 
the motions of material objects. A moving body suggests duration 
as truly as it does extension, when all its import is received ; the 
act of starting suggests then as truly as it does there ; the act of 
stopping suggests now as well as here. It may have come to do 
so by a secondary and transferred meaning ; but it does so in fact 
and by a universal and inevitable connection. 

Even when time is thought or affirmed of mental acts and 
events, it is still represented by motion in space. Hence by a 
natural consequence, when time is affirmed of processes (or 
states) that are purely spiritual, its relations are represented in 
language and thought by motions that are corporeal. It follows 
that motion furnishes all the materials for a common generaliza- 
tion of both space and time objects, and/o?' the comprehension and 
arrangement of time and space relations in the same logical system. 



472 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §281 

This explains why mathematical entities or quanta are so natu< 
rally defined by means of motion ; a fact confirmed and illustrated 
by many such definitions. These definitions always rest upon, 
and can be expressed by postulates, and these postulates always 
suppose an act or acts of motion. In geometry we say, draw a 
line ; terminate or bisect a line, giving a point ; move a line and 
it gives a surface. In arithmetic and algebra we say count, that 
is, unite as wholes, or add, subtract, multiply, and divide ; all of 
which terms suggest or supposes some images taken from spatial 
motion. 

§ 281. The extended and enduring objects which 
enduring & ob- we have thus far considered, are limited objects, and 
jects are hmi- ^ relations to space and time which, they involve 
are also limited. Whether they are presented by 
sense-perception or consciousness, whether they are represented to 
the imagination or generalized in thought, they are necessarily 
limited. The so-called dimensions of extension — length, breadth, 
and thickness, — and the various relations of duration, can only 
be affirmed of finite beings and activities. If affirmed of the In- 
finite, it is of its relations to the finite. Even mathematical re- 
lations can be conceived of only as limited or definite quantities. 
These, as we have seen, presuppose some objects imagined to exist 
in space, or series of such objects connected by acts continuous in 
time, of which certain attributes and relations are affirmed, i. e., 
they invariably presuppose limited objects. 

The infinite and indefinite have therefore no place in mathe- 
matics. What is called the mathematical infinite is either a 
quantity as yet not measured or numbered, i. e., aquantity in re- 
spect to which these processes have been begun but are not yet 
completed ; or a quantity so nearly commensurable with another 
that it may be substituted for it. The so-called infinite quanti- 
ties of the mathematics are quantities not yet actually or proxi 
mately defined, i. e., mensurable but not yet measured or defined. 
They should be carefully distinguished from what, in distinction 
from them, may be called the actual infinite or unconditioned. 
The conception of the mathematical infinite or indefinite may be 
rendered possible by the real infinitude of time and space, but in 
import the two are wholly diverse, if indeed we can be said to 
have any concept at all of the latter. 




§282. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS: TIME AND SPACE. 473 

IX. Of Space and Time as infinite and unconditioned. 
§ 282. The several attributes of limited extension 

. . i • i • i • Extension and 

and duration, involve relationship to ana questions duration distin- 
guished from, 
concerning space and time. but related to 

These attributes and properties, when considered 
collectively are called collectively, extension and duration. The 
appropriate names of the entities to which these properties in- 
volve relations, are space and time. Thus distinguished, exten- 
sion and duration, i. e., extension and duration in the concrete, or 
the extension and duration of individual objects, are known by 
experience; while space and time, as soon as they are appre- 
hended at all, are known a priori, i. e., to be the necessary and 
fundamental conditions of all actual existences and events as ex- 
tended and enduring. 

It is not asserted that in applying these attributes to objects of 
experience the mind necessarily adverts to the relations to time 
and space which they imply, but only that when the mind gives 
attention to them, it cannot fail to discover that these relations 
are implied, and with them the existence of time and space. To 
make this discovery the mind may need to make the experience 
of many objects of sense and consciousness. It may need the 
discipline of many acts of attention to separate and analyze 
what is at first known confusedly and without discrimination. 

In order fully to appreciate the time and space relations of ob- 
jects and events to one another as well as to time and space 
themselves, the imagination may need to be called into exercise. 
One material object may need to be annexed to another and still 
others to these, before space can be fully understood in all the 
relations which it involves to the extended objects thus believed 
or supposed to exist, or to other extended objects besides. In like 
manner, many events must be experienced, in order that the com- 
mon relations of all these and of all conceivable enduring objects 
to time, may be distinctly apprehended, and clearly distinguished 
from the time which is common to them all. The psychological 
conditions of knowledge are clearly distinguishable from the es- 
sence and the evidence of the objects that are known. The one 
describes the subjective conditions that render it possible for an in- 
dividual to employ and apply his mind in such a manner as to 
discern a fact or truth. The other describes objectively, what in 



474 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 283- 

its nature is knowable by all individuals under these subjective con- 
ditions, and the evidence, if there be any, by which it is known. 

§ 283. Extension and duration are also the limits 

jcctJ and ° '" or the grounds of the limits of objects and events. 

These pertain not to space and time, but to objects 

and events as related to Space and Time, and therefore and by 

this means, to one another. 

When, for example, I perceive a box either inclosing or in- 
closed by what we call a void, and affirm that what is without 
is not that which is within, or conversely ; both that which is 
within and without are conceived as matter with surfaces mutu- 
ally coinciding, but yet dividing or limiting the one from the 
other. If I conceive of the outmost limit of the universe of mat- 
ter and ask what is beyond, immediately as I ask the question I 
attach the limiting surface to other matter which is conceived to 
be beyond, and the outlines of which I begin to trace by the con- 
structive motion of which the imagination is capable. Of this 
outline, one portion, viz., the limiting surface already described, 
is fixed. The others are not yet drawn ; the mind has no occa- 
sion even to conceive them drawn, and it rests in the knowledge 
or belief that it might complete them in any way in which it 
chooses. But as soon as they should be completed they must ne- 
cessarily be conceived as inclosed by or with matter, for the simple 
reason that an extended surface of that which has no actual being 
cannot be conceived or thought of. 

In a similar way the instant which terminates or limits an 
event, is the beginning of another as yet inchoate or incomplete. 
So the beginning of an event already past, is the end of the event 
that was transacted before it. 

What we call Space and Time are those entities which can be 
occupied, as we say, by beings and events, i. e., which render their 
actual existence possible, and which in rendering them possible, 
also make it possible that they should be limited from one an- 
other, i. e., distinguished from one another by their common 
relations to space and time. 

It follows that : Relations of place do not belong to space, but 
they belong to bodies perceived or imagined to exist in space. 
Relations of time do not belong to duration, but to events occurring 
in, i- e., presupposing time. 



§ 285. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS: TIME AND SPACE. 475 

§ 284. Space and time are unlimited, simply be- Ir) what senge 
cause the conception of limitation is inapplicable to them, |?Jf e e *°J 
because by its very nature it is only applicable to and ™i«mited. 
affirmable of extended matter and occurring events, — when we 
attempt to apply it to Space and Time we can only do it by 
moans of objects and events. This attribute is therefore simply 
negative. It denies that the relation of limitation which pertains 
to bodies and acts can pertain to Space and Time. 

It is important to notice this distinction in order that we may 
preserve ourselves from many of the alleged incompatibilities 
which are conceived to be involved in the attempt to know or 
conceive of Space and Time. 

Thus Hamilton (Met. 38) urges that we are under the necessity of conceiving 
space and time either as an absolute maximum or an absolute minimum, and that 
it is impossible to do either, because the mind, as soon as it has fixed the limits to 
the ultimately great or the ultimately small, will immediately overstep or go be- 
yond the limits which it had just established, and will find itself continually 
baffled in its impotent efforts to grasp or conceive either. 

In the same strain, Kant had urged that the mind, in its attempts to conceive ot 
space and time, must continually set up two incompatible propositions — which 
he calls Antinomies — both of which cannot be true, and yet one of which would 
seem to be necessary. Both overlook that the maximum and minimum which we 
attempt to conceive are not sjmce and time, but bodies and events as limited in 
space and time. The maximum and minimum in the case are not space and time, 
nor are they concepts of either, but they are concepts of bodies and events as re- 
lated to and limited by space and time. They are limited concepts, and in their 
very nature logically inapplicable to objects which cannot be limited. To attempt 
to think of time and space under any such concepts, however great or small, is to 
make an effort which will involve certain and constant contradiction and inconsis- 
tency. To attempt to picture time and space to the imagination is impossible, 
for we can only picture objects and events with definite properties and charac- 
teristics. Even when we lay aside all properties except what we call their time 
and space relations, what we picture or imagine are still limited objects in space 
and time — objects with some defined limits of extension and duration, but not 
space and time themselves. It is true that every time we picture or image sucb 
objects we must think of their relations to their correlates, time and space; but 
time and space, in themselves, can neither be imaged nor pictured. 

§ 285. Again, Space and Time cannot be genera- gpace and 
lized or apprehended by or under concepts. Concepts J^eneraHzed 
suppose definite attributes of objects limited by aud ^' e r t * ligher 
individualized in Time and Space. But Time and 
Space are withdrawn from these conditions of generalization, for 
they are necessarily supposed as the conditions and correlates of 



476 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



286. 



all individual existences and their attributes. Even the relations 
of extension and duration, by which individual objects are pos- 
sible, cannot be intelligible except by means of these very entities 
which are the necessary correlates to these universal properties 
of all individual existences. These related properties are gen- 
sralizable, but the entities themselves to which they are related 
cannot be generalized. 

Space and Time cannot in the ordinary sense of the term be 
defined. If we cannot form concepts of these entities by means 
of generalized attributes or relations, it is manifest that we can- 
not define these concepts, because to define is simply to state the 
attributes into which a concept thus formed can be resolved, 
§ 214. They are not simple concepts, for simple concepts pertain 
to single indecomposible attributes or relations, § 197, and no one 
will for an instant believe or contend that the import of either 
space or time is exhausted by any single property or relation. 

What is demonstrated to be necessary from the nature of the 
case, is confirmed by fact and experiment whenever we make the 
trial. Whenever we endeavor to define these entities we find 
ourselves employing concents which presuppose that they are 
already known. Every concept that we use is an attribute or 
relation of some object or event which exists in space or time, 
and which implies some relation of the same to one or both. We 
fall, therefore, continually into the circle of using in our defini- 
tions terms that presuppose that to be known which we attei ipt 
to define or describe. 

§ 286. Space and time are known by intuition as 

They are x 

known as the the necessary conditions oi the existence and the con- 
conditions of _ r - . - „ . . , 

their limited ception oi all objects and events. Jkvery object and 

C O FF6 lite* 

event, as has been already explained, has properties 
or attributes which imply the existence of these entities. In 
knowing that these objects exist, we know that time and space 
exist as their actual conditions. In conceiving of these objects or 
events as real or possible, we must conceive of them as related 
to space and time, and, of course, must recognize time and space 
as their logical conditions. 

While, then, it is true that we can neither generalize nor define 
time and space, because the very attributes which we must 
employ imply both, it is true, on the other hand, that we cannot 



§ 237. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS : TIME AND SPACE. 477 

generalize or define any object whatever without recognizing 
both, and, therefore, time and space must enter as the material 
into all our concepts. Again : 

Though time and space cannot be defined or conceived by the 
relations of objects and events which imply time and space, yet, 
on the other hand, as the correlates of all such objects, they can 
be explained to the mind by means of the limited relations which 
imply their real existence. So far is it from being true that, be- 
cause space and time are known by intuition, they are known out 
of relation to limited objects and events; that rather it is 
only possible to know them by means of such relations. On 
the other hand, they are only known as implied in the relations 
which are called collectively the extension and duration of such 
concrete realities ; on the other, they cannot be generalized nor 
defined by means of any such relations, because all imply their 
existence. 

It has already, § 247 (5), been asserted that the distinct recog- 
nition of these correlates, is, as it were, the fifth or last stage of the 
mind's attainment in cognition ; which is reached only by the few 
who are trained to habits of speculative analysis and discrimina- 
tion. If this is so, then it is obvious that the number of thinkers 
is very small who have any occasion to ask the question, whether 
space and time can be defined, or whether they are known out 
of relation to or by means of their relations to the concrete. 
But the persons who have occasion to ask these questions can 
certainly comprehend that the very relations which cannot pos- 
sibly be used to define time and space, because they imply them, 
may, for this very reason, be the only medium of bringing them 
before the mind for the uses of thought. 

§ 287. What then, are space and time? Are they 

7 . 7 . . 7 ._ What are spac* 

substances, qualities, or relations? Or, are they the and time ?con- 
forms or subjective conditions of knowledge by sense or 
consciousness? Or is it impossible to ascertain what they are? 
These questions will force themselves upon the attention of a 
few ; and they require an answer. 

Are they substances? That they are material things with 
sensible qualities will scarcely be imagined or contended by any 
one. No one would honestly believe or seriously urge that they 
can be heard, or smelled, or seen, or tasted or touched. Space 



478 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§287. 






and time are not perceived in such ways or by such means, 
and hence cannot be classed with material substances. Nor are 
they spiritual beings. They have none of the properties of 
spirits. They cannot think, or feel, or will. Nor can they be 
apprehended by consciousness in the special sense of the term. 
Neither time nor space is a spiritual substance. 

They are not qualities or properties of spirit or matter. Dr. 
Samuel Clark maintained that space and time are attributes or 
modes, and that inasmuch as both are infinite, there must 
be an Infinite Being to which they belong. James Mill, in his 
Analysis of the Human Mind, chap. xiv. asserts that they are 
simply abstract terms which stand for collective conceptions of 
those attributes of extension and duration, which belong to 
individual beings and acts. But it needs no further discussion to 
prove that they are aud can be neither. Nor are they simply 
relations, as Leibnitz maintained. This philosopher defined space 
as an order of co-existence/ and time as 'an order of succession.' 
(Third letter to Dr. S. Clark, § 4, ed. Erd.,p. 752.) Using exten- 
sion as its equivalent, he defines space as the order of possible 
co-existences ; and time as the order of inconstant possibilities. 
(Reply to Bayle, ed. Erd.,p. 189.) Calderwood defines time as " a 
certain correlation of existences," and distinguishes his own view 
from that of Hamilton, who calls it " the image or concept of a 
certain correlation of existences." (The Phil, of the Infinite, 2d 
ed., c. v.) 

It is evident from what has been said already, that space and 
time are neither relations nor correlations, but correlates to beings 
and events. Extension and duration are the relations or correla- 
tions in question ; but these involve space and time as realities. 

Again : Space and time are not forms of intuition [?'. c, presentation] in the 
sense suggested by Kant, that is, not subjective forms only. This philosopher taught 
that if we distinguish the matter apprehended by perception and consciousness 
from the forms of this matter, then space is the form of sense-perception or ex- 
ternal intuition, and time is the form of consciousness. There is a sense in which 
this doctrine is true. Extension is the form of material objects in the sense 
that all such objects are perceived as extended, and none can be apprehended 
except under the form or condition of being an extended object. Wheu all the 
matter which is given in the various sensible qualities is thought away, the rela- 
tions of extension remain. The same is true of the matter furnished in conscious- 
ness as distinguished from its relations of duration. 

But the doctrine as further expounded by Kant is open to two exceptions First: 



§ 288. MATHEMATICAL RELATIONS I TIME AND SPACE. 479 

He fails to distinguish between extension and duration as relations, and the 
correlates space and time which they involve. He does not notice that these very- 
relations, after or under which all objects and their concepts are and must be 
formed, do in their very nature involve the intuitive knowledge of space and 
time as realities, and that to suppose that they are only forms is to exclude and 
eliminate that which is given and affirmed by their very nature. Second: The 
suggestion or the assumption that they depend on the subjective constitution of 
the human intellect is unwarranted by positive evidence and is contradicted hy 
the testimony of the intellect itself. The supposition that intellects of another 
order might possibly exist, which could know objects without the relation of space 
and time, is without proof and against proof (§ 259.) In other words, that which 
makes it possible and necessary for extension and duration to be the forms of 
perception and consciousness is the fact that the objects of these two modes of 
knowledge are in reality related to the entities space and time. 

§ 288. St. Augustine is reported to have said — " What Conclu8ioa 
is time? If not asked, I know, but attempting to 
explain, I know not." This, in one view, is correct. We know 
by intuition that time and space exist, but to explain or define 
what they are, is not so easy. It may relieve our embar- 
rassment in part to explain why we cannot answer the question 
in one sense, and why we can in another. If, in answering the 
question what, it is expected or required that we should class 
them with objects limited by space or time, or objects having 
material or spiritual properties, or objects holding relations to 
space and time, in other words, that we should class them with 
beings, qualities, or relations, in the ordinary acceptation of these 
terms, then it is obvious that we cannot answer this question at 
all. We cannot say ivhat they are. But we know that they 
exist, *. e., there exist realities which answer to the terms. Their 
existence is implied in the existence of every limited object and 
property, because every such object and property is related to 
them. We cannot believe or know that the one exists without 
knowing that the other exists also. But can we in any sense of 
the word, w/ia£, explain the nature of that which we know exists? 
We can, so far as to say that they are entities to which all these 
limited objects are related, and which are, therefore, correlates to 
them. If they are correlates to all limited objects, they are 
known and described by their relations to them. By their very 
nature they are entities to which these objects bear these rela- 
tions, and by their relations to these objects they are known and 
thought of. They cannot be said to be defined in the sense in 



480 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§289. 



which limited objects are defined, but they can be suggested or 
described to the mind as the necessary correlates of limited ex- 
istences, by means of their relations to them. 

These relations to both space and time are represented in 
thought and language by means of motion, as has already been 
explained, and hence it follows that space and time are set forth 
in thought and language by the same medium. 

We conclude that in whatever sense space and time are uncon- 
ditioned, infinite, and absolute, they are not so in any such sense 
as to exclude the possibility of being related to the finite. By 
means of these relations they can be both conceived and known. 
C§342.) 



CHAPTER V. 



CAUSATION AND THE RELATION OF CAUSALITY. 






§ 289. From the formal and mathematical intui- 

Causation as a. . . 

law, and as a tions we come to those which are real, l. e., which are 

principle. . .. . 

required to explain the attributes which are respect- 
ively distinctive of material and spiritual beings. Into these real 
relations all the actually existing properties and powers of matter 
and spirit are resolved. Under the laws which regulate their 
operation, the effects and purposes that describe the universe are 
accomplished. We shall consider first, the relation of causality or 
causation. 

The relation of causality is sometimes called the Law, at 
other times the Principle of causality, causation, or cause and 
effect. Causation as a law is viewed as a relation actually 
prevailing in or ruling over the finite universe of physical and 
spiritual being. Causation as a principle is placed first or highest 
with reference to the other concepts or truths which depend upon 
or are derived from it — either relatively or absolutely, according 
as the truth is received as original or derived. The first of these 
appellations is objective and real, and indicates its universal preva- 
lence among objects actually existing. The other is subjective and 
logical, and designates the place which the relation or the proposj- 



§ 290. CAUSATION AND THE RELATION OF CAUSALITY. 481 

tion in which it is expressed holds in the systematic arrangement 
of our knowledge, (cf. § 246). 

Causation as a law may be stated thus : Every finite event is 
a caused event, or, more briefly, is an effect. Causation, as a 
principle, may be thus expressed : Every finite event may be ac- 
counted for by referring it to a cause as the ground or reason of 
its existence. 

It is scarcely necessary to observe, that the proposition, every 
effect must have a cause, is purely and simply identical. It is 
ncro tautology, expanding in the predicate what had been im- 
plied in the subject. The term effect, in its import, implies a 
cause by a logical necessity. To say an effect must be caused, is 
as reasonable as to say, a caused event is caused, or, xy = x X y. 

§ 290. Causation, both as law and principle, is 

° 7 . a -Event defined. 

affirmed of events. But what is an event t An event 
is something which is known to be, which was not ; or which 
begins to be or to occur. Events are, therefore, finite, *. e., 
limited by relations of space or time. Their existence or occur- 
rence implies change. Something is here and now which was 
not. Ot these changes it is affirmed that they were caused. 

In the material world, events are changes of place or relative 
position, motions in space, changes of form, changes of properties 
in respect to existence or intensity. They are often called pheno- 
mena, i. e., manifestations to the senses or the consciousness of 
some power or agency. 

Events or phenomena are more numerous and conspicuous in 
the vegetable and animal sphere. There is growth, change of form 
and of structure, the manifestation of new colors, odors, and 
above all, there is constant motion. In the mental or spiritual 
sphere, new thoughts, new feelings, new purposes, pass before the 
observant eye of consciousness faster than they can be accounted 
for. But besides phenomena of these classes in the world of life, 
which appear in acts, states, or qualities, more or less lasting, 
there are still others in the existence and production of new and 
separate beings, material and spiritual. 

Besides these, there are conditions or states more or less per- 
manent which require to be accounted for, such as the equilibria 
of forces, or pressure, as illustrated in the action of gravitation 
or electricity, the tendencies of fluids at rest or in motion. All 
21 



482 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 291. 

these, so far as tue law of causation is concerned, come under 
the class of events or phenomena. 

Many of these so-called events and phenomena are a combina- 
tion of several, and made up of many units. But whether simple 
or complex, each one of them is caused. If the question be raised, 
What is a single event, or the simplest phenomenon ? we have 
only to reply, that any change, the least extensive in space, or the 
briefest possible in time, which can be discerned by human ob- 
servation, is a single event. 

§ 291. Again : we distinguish between the causes 

Cause distin- ° fe °. . 

guished from of an event and the conditions 01 its actually pro- 
ducing the effect. The stroke of a hammer is the 
cause of the fracture of a stone, of the flattening of a leaden 
bullet, of the heating of a bit of iron. The conditions of the 
effect would, in such a case, be said to be the properties of the 
stone, the bullet, or the iron. 

In any such case the effect is frequently said to be the resultant 
of the joint action of the striking hammer and the resisting 
stone, lead, or iron. This doctrine is thus generalized by Mill : 
" The real cause is the whole of these antecedents (or conditions), 
and we have, philosophically speaking, no right to give the name 
of cause to one of them exclusively of the others." (Log.,B. iii. 
c. v.,§ 3). To the same effect, says Hamilton: "Every effect is 
only produced by the concurrence of at least two causes (and by 
cause, be it observed, I mean every thing without which the 
effect could not be realized)." (Met, Lee. 3.) In common life a 
distinction is made between the efficient and patient cause, the 
last being used for the object, i. e., that on which the causal agency 
shows a result, or upon which it is exerted. It is obvious that that 
whose activity is most obvious or demonstrative, is called the 
efficient. The patient or recipient often exhibits no force or energy, 
as, the cohesion of the stone, lead, or iron in the cases supposed. 

Sometimes the objects in their matter and chief elements are 
said to be the same, but the force or causal agency is applied 
under diverse conditions of quantity, time, or distance: as a 
chemical agency is doubled ; the gravitating force operates with a 
varying energy ; a wave of light acts with twice a given ra- 
pidity. These conditions are called in scientific language, the laws 
of the acting of the forces or powers — the causal agents — of nature. 






§ 292 CAUSATION AND THE RELATION OF CAUSALITY. 483 

§ 292. Of causation both as a law and a principle 
we assert that the relation is original and independent, cannot 'be*?* 
Those who regard it as secondary and derived usually Se-reiaion. a 
resolve it into some relation of time. The history 
of speculation abounds in such attempts. This is not surprising. 
The relations of time pertain to all objects whatever. If objects 
are connected by the relation of causality, the same objects must 
also be united to observation either as co-existent or as succes- 
sive. The most conspicuous advocates of this disposition of the 
oausal relation are David Hume, Dr. Thomas Brown, and John 
Stuart Mill. 

Hume defines a cause as a constantly precedent, and an effect 
as a constantly subsequent event. The necessity by which conjoined 
objects are connected as cause and effect, arises from their being 
united in the mind's own experience, and the consequent fact 
that the thought or observation of the one determines the mind 
to a lively idea of the other. They are discovered to be thus re- 
lated by the constant conjunction of the two. 

Dr. T. Brown agrees with Hume that the relation of cause and 
effect is nothing more than the constant and invariable connec- 
tion of two objects in time, — the one as antecedent and the other 
as consequent. Brown differs from Hume in holding that two 
objects need only be conjoined in a single instance in order to be 
known as cause and effect respectively, while the theory of Hume 
requires that they must be frequently conjoined in order to be 
causally connected. Indeed the interest and meaning of 
Hume's causal connection depends upon the tendency of the 
mind to think of those objects together which have been observed 
to be conjoined in fact. Brown contends that the only use of re- 
peated observations is to enable the mind to analyze or separate 
complex objects into their ultimate elements; a single conjunc- 
tion of any two clearly distinguished objects, in his view, gives 
their causal connection. 

" A cause, therefore, in the fullest definition which it philosophically admits, 
may be said to be, that which immediately precedes any change, and which, ex- 
isting at any time in similar circumstances, has been always, and will be always, 
immediately followed by a similar change. Priority in the sequence observed, 
and invariableness of antecedence in the past and future sequences supposed, are 
the elements, and the only elements, combined in the notion of cause. By a con- 
rersion of terms, we obtain a definition of the correlative effect ; and power, as I 



484 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§292. 



have before observed, is only another word for expressing abstractly and briefly 
the antecedence itself and the invariableness of the relation." — T. Brown, Inquiry, 
etc., Part I., Sec. 1. Cf. Lectures, Lee. vii. 

The Theory of Hume and Brown has, in its essential features, 
been reproduced and defended by John Stuart Mill. It is fully 
and fairly stated in his own language in the following extracts 
from his System of Logic. 

" The law of causation, the recognition of which is the main pillar of inductive 
philosophy, is but the familiar truth, that invariability of succession is found by 
observation to obtain between every fact in nature and some other fact which has 
preceded it." * * " To certain facts, certain facts always do and as we believe 
always will succeed. The invariable antecedent is termed the cause ; the invari- 
able consequent, the effect ; and the universality of the law of causation consists 
in this, that every consequent is connected in this manner with some particular 
antecedent, or set of antecedents. Let the fact be what it may, if it has begun 
to exist, it was preceded by some fact or facts, with which it is invariably con- 
nected."— B. III.,c. v.,§ 2. 

" I have no objection to define a cause, the assemblage of phenomena, which 
occurring, some other phenomenon invariably commences or has its origin. 
Whether the effect coincides in point of time with, or immediately follows, the 
hindmost of its conditions, is immaterial. At all events it does not precede it ; 
and when we are in doubt between two coexistent phenomena, which is cause and 
which effect, we rightly deem the question solved if we can ascertain which of 
them preceded the other." — B. III.,c. v., §-6. 

In other words, causation does not imply production, depen- 
dence, efficiency or force, but simply uniform succession or con- 
stant conjunction. All events or begun existences are or may be 
presumed to be invariably preceded by certain events, more or 
fewer, in a set or assemblage, each one of which is as truly a 
cause as any other. 

Against these views of Mill and others, we contend that the re- 
lation of causation cannot be resolved into any relations of Time. 
Our reasons are these. It is conceded by Mill, that in some 
cases, no interval of antecedence or succession can be discerned 
between the cause and the effect. To set aside the force of this un- 
deniable fact, he contends that though this is true, yet all those 
cases in which we have occasion to resort to the law of causa- 
tion, are cases of begun existence, in which the cause is obviously 
before the effect. He insists therefore that " practicalhj " his view 
of the nature of causation cannot be controverted. This we 
grant, so far as to aliow that in most instances in which we have 
occasion to discover a cause or predict an effect, the event is a 



§ 293. CAUSATION AND THE RELATION OF CAUSALITY. 485 

begun existence. In other words, practically every caused exis- 
tence is a begun existence, and every cause precedes its effect, and 
every effect follows its cause : or, which is the same thing, the re- 
lations before and after usually attend the relation of causality. 
This is simply the truism that all events, i. e., all begun exis- 
tences^ phenomena, occur in time; or, stated in another manner, 
that all finite phenomena are subject to time-relations. But it is 
one thing to assert, which is all that Mill does in this passage, that 
we can determine causes and effects by meams of their constantly 
attending relations of time, and quite another to show that the 
two relations are identical. 

That they are not identical is proved by the fact that, without 
the assumption of the relation of causation as distinct and real, 
logical deduction would be impossible. This has been shown in 
the analysis of deduction already given. Induction also would be 
unmeaning. It is idle to contend that the force of the reasons 
and laws by which we explain and predict events is exhausted by 
resolving them into uniform antecedences and successions in time. 
This has been already shown under Induction. It will be more 
conclusively proved when we consider in its place the explanation 
of Induction given by Mill in his own theory of the nature of the 
causal relation, § 294. This explanation not only fails to satisfy 
the mind in respect to induction, but it reacts against his under- 
lying and assumed construction of the causal relation. But aside 
from these considerations, we contend that the very statement of 
the proposition is its own sufficient refutation. The human mind 
clearly distinguishes the relations of time from the relations of 
causality and production. The intelligent and universal use of 
the whole vocabulary of terms appropriate to each of these 
fJasses of relations is but the constant attestation that this dis 
tinction is made universally and necessarily by the mind; in 
other words, that causation cannot be resolved into any relation 
of time. 

§ 293. The relation of causality being established, 
we assert that the mind intuitively believes that every f cauKty \t 
event is caused, i. e., is produced by the action dent.™ y 
of some agent or agents, which, with respect to the effect, ara 
called its cause or its causes. 

The reasons for this view are the following : — 



486 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 293. 

(a) We explain the occurrence of events in common life, on 
the assumption of this truth. To explain phenomena is to refer 
to the beings or agencies which have occasioned them. When 
these producing agents are discovered, and the modes and laws 
of their action are referred to or unfolded, the process of ex- 
planation is complete. 

(b) When an event has occurred which is not yet accounted 
for, and the mind is aroused to the effort to solve or explain its 
occurrence, it believes just as firmly that it can be accounted 
for in the way described, as if the explanation had been in fact 
attained. It is as confident before as after the cause has been 
determined, that its occurrence depends upon some cause or 
causes. Upon this confidence rest all the inquiries and experi- 
ments which it sets on foot. 

(c) The mind not only explains the past, but it relies upon the 
future, on the ground of its faith in causation. It provides for 
or secures future results by availing itself of the causes which it 
knows will produce them. It employs these agents in all its 
plans and experiments with entire certainty of the results which 
they will effect. It predicts these results with confidence so soon 
as it is certain of all the causes which are or may be put into 
action. 

(d) In these explanations and experiments the mind is 
impelled by a special emotion, always present and powerful. 
Curiosity is more than an interest and desire to know an 
event as a fact : it impels to the knowledge of its causes 
and laws, of its origin and growth. The existence of a 
strong and apparently original emotional capacity of this sort 
confirms the view that the relation itself is original as a law of 
existence, and that the belief in it is a fundamental principle of 
the mind's knowledge. 

What the mind unconsciously assumes to be true in practical 
life, it distinctly and consciously applies in all the methods and 
processes of thought and of science. We have seen that deduc- 
tive reasoning has no meaning unless the relation of causality is 
assumed, and that induction in its researches after the forces and 
laws of matter and of spirit, makes the same assumption. 
Science, in all its processes, investigates the properties, the 
powers, the forces, the attributes, and the laws, of all existing 









§ 294. CAUSATION AND THE RELATION OF CAUSALITY. 487 

objects. But properties, powers, forces, and attributes are all of 
them terms which directly assert or indirectly imply that there 
is a causal energy or activity in these objects. The laws of 
matter and of spirit have no import, and can admit no applica- 
tion, except as causal agencies are affirmed which these laws 
measure or formulate. Except as the causal relation is believed 
and assumed, scientific knowledge can have no import, and sci- 
entific inquiries would be meaningless and impossible. 

Moreover : the belief in the relation of causality is wrought 
ijito and expressed by the structure of language. There are 
words which express causal activity, words which express the re- 
ception of such activity, and words which express the changes 
which are wrought in objects by means of causal activity. The 
grammar of every language furnishes proof of this, both in its 
etymology and its syntax. 

These considerations prove decisively that our belief in causation 
is an intuitive principle which meets all the criteria of universal- 
ity, necessity, and originality. 

§ 294. This opinion is disputed by many. Vari- Counter thoo- 
ous counter theories have been devised to account for lief ' not 
the universal or, as the case may be, for the very gene- induction or 
ral application of causation. The first of these 
counter theories which we notice is, that the belief in the univer- 
sality of causation is, like other general beliefs, acquired by 
induction. This is the doctrine of J. S. Mill. 

"With respect to the general law of causation it does appear that there must 
have been a time when the universal prevalence of that law throughout nature 
could not have been affirmed in the same confident and unqualified manner as at 
present. There was a time when many of the phenomena of nature must have 
appeared altogether capricious and irregular, not governed by any laws, nor 
steadily consequent upon any causes." * * " The truth is, as M. Comte has well 
pointed out, that (although the generalizing propensity must have prompted 
mankind from almost the beginning of their experience to ascribe all events to 
some cause more or less mysterious) the conviction that phenomena have invarl 
able laws> and follow with regularity certain antecedent phenomena, was only 
acquired gradually; and extended itself as knowledge advanced, from one order 
of phenomena to another, beginning with those whose laws are most accessible to 
observation." — B. III.,c. xxi.,$ 3. 

" I apprehend that the considerations which give, at the present day, to the 
proof of the law of the uniformity of succession, as true of all phenomena with- 
out exception, this character of completeness and conclusiveness, are the follow- 
ing: First, that we now know it directly to be true of far the greater number of 



488 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§294. 









phenomena ; that there are none of which we know it not to be true, the utmost 
that can be said being that of some we cannot positively, from direct evidence, 
affirm its truth," etc., etc. " Besides this first class of considerations there is a 
second, which still further corroborates the conclusion, and from the recognition of 
which the complete establishment of the universal law may reasonably be dated." 
" When every phenomenon that we know sufficiently well to be able to answer 
the question, had a cause on which it was invariably consequent, it was more ra- 
tional to suppose that our inability to assign the causes of other phenomena arose 
from our ignorance, than that there were phenomena which were uncaused, and 
which happened accidentally to be exactly those which we had hitherto had no suffi- 
cient opportunity of studying. It must, at the same time, be remarked, that the 
reasons for this reliance do not hold in circumstances unknown to us, and beyond 
the possible range of our experience. In distant parts of the stellar regions, 
where the phenomena may be entirely unlike those with which we are acquainted, 
It would be folly to affirm confidently that this general law prevails, any more 
than those special ones which we have found to hold universally on our own planet. 
The uniformity in the succession of events, otherwise called the law of causation, 
must be received not as a law of the universe, but of that portion of it only which 
is within the range of our means of sure observation, with a reasonable degree of 
extension to adjacent cases. To extend it further is to make a supposition without 
evidence, and to which, in the absence of any good ground from experience for esti- 
mating its degree of probability, it would be ridiculous to affect to assign it." — 
B. III.,c. xxi.,g§ 4, 5. 

Closely allied to this is the doctrine of Hume : that the belief is 
the result of association. Indeed, Mill blends the two in one, inas- 
much as he makes induction to be the result of repeated or insepara- 
ble associations. This doctrine expressed by Hume is as follows : 

" The first time a man saw the communication of motion by impulse, as by the 
shock of two billiard-balls, he could not pronounce that the one event was con- 
nected, but only that it was conjoined with the other. After he has observed 
several instances of this nature, he then pronounces them to be connec'ed. Wiiat 
alteration has happened to give rise to this new idea of connection f Nothing but 
that he now feels these events to be connected in his imagination, and can readily fore- 
tell the existence of one from the appearance of the other. — Inquiry, etc. } Lec. vii.,p. 2. 

"Necessity is something that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possi- 
ble for us ever to form the most distant idea of it considered as a quality in 
bodies. Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that de- 
termination of the thought to pass from causes to effects, and from effects to 
causes, according to their experienced union. 'A cause is an object precedent 
and contiguous to another, and so united with it that the idea of the one deter- 
mines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one t« 
form a more lively idea of the other.' " — Human Nature, B. I., Lee. xiv. 

(1.) The advocates of each of these theories overlook the real 
question at issue. The belief to be explained or accounted for, is, 
that every event has a cause. The belief which the advocates of 
this theory seek to account for, is the belief that to each particu- 



§ 294. CAUSATION AND THE RELATION OF CAUSALITY. 489 

lar event or class of events, some definite cause has been or may 
be actually assigned. That this last can only be the product of 
experience is obvious. That this is the belief in support of which 
they adduce illustrations and arguments is evident from the pas- 
sages which we have quoted from Hume and Mill. That this is 
not the belief which is in question, needs no illustration or argu- 
ment. 

(2.) No simple experience of actual events can establish the 
application of its results any further than the range of actual 
events of which we have had this experience. But in both General- 
ization and Induction, we go far beyond our actual experience. 
When, from the observation of a few objects or a few events, we 
generalize a concept or a law which we apply to objects or events 
more or less like them, we use the belief that what we have observed 
will prove true of what we have not observed. Whether what 
we have observed are called simple uniformities of antecedence 
and succession, or uniformities of causation, makes no difference 
with the nature of the act by which we pass from the known to 
the unknown. 

Mill himself most pertinently observes : "We believe that fire 
will burn to-morrow because it burned to-day and yesterday ; but 
we believe on precisely the same grounds that it burned before 
we were born, and that it burns this very day in Cochin-China. 
It is not from the past to the future [only or as such] as past or 
future, that we infer, but from the known to the unknown ; from 
facts observed to facts unobserved ; from what we have per- 
ceived, or been directly conscious of, to what has not come within 
our experience." 

He also admits, in the passages already quoted, that we do not 
limit ourselves to experience. In asking why, when we cannot 
assign a definite cause for an event, we yet believe it to be caused, 
he says it is " more rational to suppose that our inability to assign 
the causes of other phenomena arose from our ignorance than 
that there were phenomena which were uncaused." While then 
he insists that we have no warrant from experience in applying 
the results of experience " to circumstances unknown to us and 
beyond the possible range of our experience," and contends that 
u the law of causation must be received not as a law of the uni- 
verse, but of that portion of it only which is within the range of 

21* 



490 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§294 



our means of observation," he is careful to subjoin " with a rea- 
sonable degree of extension to adjacent cases." It would be difficult 
to give a meaning to the phrases " it is more rational to suppose" 
and " with a reasonable extension to adjacent cases" without finding 
in them a real, though reluctant homage to the intuition, " Every 
event must be caused" 

(3.) Induction assumes this belief as already present to or 
ready to be applied by the mind. Mill concedes that Iuduction 
itself has axioms. He says, " whatever be the best way of ex- 
pressing it, the proposition that the course of nature is uniform, is 
the fundamental principle, or general axiom of Induction." The 
proposition that "the course of nature is uniform" must mean that 
the unknown uniformities of succession or causation correspond 
to those which are known. If this is a general axiom or funda- 
mental principle of Induction, it would seem that it cannot be 
gained or derived by means of Induction. And yet Mill contends 
that the axiom which is necessarily assumed to give meaning and 
reality to the process of Induction is acquired by means of the pro- 
cess to which it is a necessary pre-condition. 

(4.) The resolution of this belief into tenacious or inseparable 
associations, or as Hume more bluntly expresses it, into " custom 
or habit" is more palpably untenable than the other theory or form 
of this theory. 

The resolution of the objective reality of this connection into a mere subjective 
association of the two terms fails to satisfy the mind, because it does not account 
for what is believed. How the mind comes to think of the one when the other 
is observed or thought of, is a very different question from this, ' how or by what 
relation does the mind believe that the objects thus thought of together, are con- 
nected in fact ?' 

It is a mere truism to say that objects observed or 
thought of together will be conjoined by association. The 
fact that the mind is constantly determined to one thought 
by the presence of another, is very different from the fact that 
the two things thought of, are necessarily determined the one by 
the other. If the two are viewed simply as psychological experi- 
ences, even the subjective law by which the objects concerned 
are presented to the mind in constant conjunction, is clearly dif- 
ferent from the subjective belief that the objects so presented 
are united causally. 

The philosopher who directly, like Hume, or indirectly^ lik'i 






§ 295. CAUSATION AND THE RELATION OF CAUSALITY. 491 

Mill, resolves the principle of causality into the law of association, 
complicates rather than simplifies the problem. For he imposes 
upon himself the obligation to show that the objective world 
of fact corresponds to the subjective world of ideas. This he must 
show by deduction, induction or intuition: but deduction and 
iuduction both rest upon intuition ; consequently even the theory 
which attempts to dispense with intuition must in the final analy- 
sis rest upon it, in one form or another, as the ultimate arbiter. 
§ 295. The two next theories resolve the principle 

/> i'i • j .7 7 , • /» • m Not resolvable 

oi causality into the observations oj experience, ascrib- into outward 
ing it to our sense-perceptions of the phenomena of Senior both! 
matter, or to our conscious experience of the phe- Bkau. and Da 
nomena of the soul, or, again, to both of these con- 
jointly. 

Locke seems to advocate, in different passages of his Essay, 
every one of these theories. The following passages may be 
fairly taken to represent each of the three : — 



"In the notice that our senses take of the constant vicissitude of things, we 
cannot but observe that several particulars, both qualities and substances, begin 
to exist ; and that they receive this their existence from the due application and 
operation of some other being. From this observation we get our ideas of cause 
and effect. That which produces any simple or complex idea, we denote by the 
general name, cause, and that which is produced, effect. Thus finding in that 
substance which we call wax, fluidity, which is a simple idea that was not in 
it before, is constantly produced by the application of a certain degree of heat, 
we call the simple idea of heat in relation to fluidity in wax, the cause of it, and 
fluidity, the effect." — Essay, B. II., e. xxvi.,$ 1. 

"A body at rest affords us no idea of any active power to move; before it is 
set in motion itself, that motion is rather a passion than an action in it. For 
when the ball obeys the stroke of a billiard-stick, it is not any action of the ball, 
but bare passion." 

" The idea of the beginning of motion, we have only from reflection on what 
p.-sses in ourselves, where we find by experience, that barely by willing it, barely 
a ihought of the mind, we can move the parts of our bodies which were before at 
rjst. So that it seems to me, we have from the observation of the operation of 
bodies by our senses, but a very imperfect, obscure idea of active power, since 
they afford not any idea in themselves of the power to begin any action, either 
motion or thought. But if from the impulse bodies are observed to make one 
upon another, any one thinks he has a clear idea of power, it serves as well to 
my purpose, Sensation being one of those ways whereby the mind comes by its 
ideas ; only I thought it worth while to consider here by the way, whether tha 
mind doth not receive its idea of active power clearer from reflection on its own 
operations, than it does from any external sensation." B. II. c. xxi.,2 4. 



492 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



295. 






Locke's view has been understood to be, that by simple obser- 
vation and experience of material or spiritual events, wo know 
that they are connected as causes and effects, and that on the 
ground of the experience thus given in sense and consciousness, 
we believe, conclude, or infer, that all events are so connected. 
To the theory as thus interpreted the reply is decisive : First, 
that simple experience of the known can of itself furnish no 
warrant for a belief concerning the unknown, unless we apply 
or assume some a priori principle or original intuition ; Second, 
sense-perception and consciousness are usually so denned as to 
include the discernment of the relations of space and time. But 
the relations of space and time are a priori, and are discerned 
by intuition. It cannot then be urged that sense and conscious- 
ness as forms or acts of simple experience, are the source or 
sources of our belief of causation. Experience is a posteriori, and 
excludes any a priori element. 

Royer Collard and Maine de Biran, two distinguished philoso- 
phers of the modern French school, have each introduced im- 
portant modifications of the theory of Locke. 

Eoyer Collard, Fragmens de Legons ( CEuvres de T. Reid, T. 
iv.,p. 296), contends that our experience of psychical phenomena 
alone gives us direct knowledge of the causal relation, inasmuch 
as mental states are, by their very nature, known to be caused 
by the ego. We know by consciousness that we are causes, 
and these are the only causes which we do know. But we know 
that every event is caused, as a self-evident and intuitive truth. 

Maine de Biran, (CEuvres, T. iv.,) expands this general state- 
ment into a refined theory which he explains with great subtlety, 
and defends with equal boldness as follows: — 

The soul, in all its higher states and elements of states, is not 
receptive but active. As active, it is the originator or producer 
of effects. These effects are of two sorts : those which are purely 
psychical, and those which are external as they affect the body 
and originate motion. In those states which are purely psychi- 
cal, and in the other states so far as they are such consciousness 
distinguishes between the ego, the ego in action, and the result oj tht 
acting of the ego. . 

(a.-) The ego, discerned or apperceived, is not the soul as a sub- 
stance, but only the individual ego. (6.) The ego thus apper- 



§ 295. CAUSATION AND THE RELATION OF CAUSALITY. 493 

ceived is known neither as out of action, nor as prepared for action, 
but as acting — these acts in all cases being individual, (c.) This 
activity is also causal or productive action. In its very nature 
and essence it is known as passing into effects. 

In other words,De Biran holds that the relation of causation is 
gained by the soul through conscious observation of the ego in 
action. In answer to the more important question, How does it 
know that every event has a cause ? De Biran would reply : On 
occasion of the individual apperception described, we extend the 
causative relations to objects other than ourselves, by a principle 
of natural induction or analogy. 

His theory, stated in a single proposition, is that we believe all 
events external to our own experience to be caused, because we 
explain all such events by natural induction, after the like- 
ness or analogy of that spiritual causation of which we are 
directly cognizant in ourselves. 

The theory of De Biran may be admitted, that we gain our 
first knowledge of the causal relation from the experience of per- 
sonal and individual causality, without involving his second posi- 
tion, viz: that, by natural induction, we make a universal 
application of our individual experience to every possible 
event. The so-called natural induction of De Biran must 
rest upon or involve an intuition, equivalent to the a 
priori principle, every event must have a cause. Otherwise 
it is impossible to see what warrant we have to transfer what 
is true of our individual experience to the whole spiritual 
and material universe. The fact that, psychologically, we have the 
earliest and most complete exemplification of the causal relation in 
our spiritual experience, does not in the least explain, philosophi- 
cally, why it is that we believe this relation to be of universal 
application. 

From the fact assumed or believed that the soul derives its first notion of cause 
from its conscious activity, the inference has been derived that causation is pro- 
dicable of spirit only ; that a material cause is contradictory in conception and 
impossible in fact. This inference has been held in two forms. 

(1.) It has been inferred, first, that the conception of a material cause is self- 
contradictory; because, forsooth, our knowledge of the causal relation is derived 
from our own psychical activity. Spirit alone, it is contended, is essentially ac- 
tive and causal, and in spirit, will is that only which is active. Matter is incapa- 
ble of force ; it presents the appearances of antecedent and successive phenomena, 
but behind these appearances there is no force except what spirit imparts. 



494 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §296. 

Against this view the following objections are decisive : (a.) The soul finds in 
its own positive psychical experience, evidence that "force and power are" not 
" applicable only to will ;" for it finds spiritual energies that are neither intelli- 
gent nor voluntary. When it seeks and strives to fix its attention, to recall for- 
gotten objects, and to control its rebellious desires, it contends against actual forces 
which are not uniformly regulated by intelligence or controlled by the will. There 
are ' secondary causes ' within the soul at least, if there are not in matter. 

(o.) It does not follow, because we derive the notion of causation or force from 
ihe conscious activities of an intelligent will, that the relation itself involves 
aither intelligence or will. Let it be conceded that at first the soul, by a not 
unnatural illusion, refers every event which it does not produce by its own activity 
to some spiritual agent other than itself. It soon learns to correct such judgments. 
It learns that a spirit does not directly blow upon the trees or agitate the sea, for 
it finds the agitation of the air interposed ; it then discovers that this agitation is 
occasioned by heat ; then that heat is dependent upon the sun, or some other 
agent. 

(c.) According to this theory, the universe of matter and of spirit, except so 
far as it is capable of intelligence, is unreal and impossible. Matter without 
qualities or powers, is inconceivable; but qualities and powers involve force, i. e., 
causal energy. The exercise of power is also inconceivable, except by beings 
capable of voluntary energy. 

For these reasons we reject the theory. We distinguish intelligent and volun- 
tary activity from simple causal energy. We distinguish causal from creative 
force, i. e., origination under conditions furnished by another being from origina- 
tion without such conditions. We distinguish primary from secondary causes. 

(2.) The second inference derived from the position that the activity of spirit 
furnishes the notion of causation, is, that there is but one agent in the universe, 
and He is the Creator ; that causation is conceivable of neither created matter 
nor created spirit, and the apparent activities of both are held to be varied mani- 
festations of His single force, in phenomena successive to one another. If this 
doctrine were true, it could not be legitimately derived in the way prescribed by 
this theory, which makes the notion of causality to be furnished from a created or 
finite agent, and yet infers it to be inapplicable to any other than a being which 
is infinite and uncreated. 

Malebranche (Rech. de la Ver., p. 2, c. 3,) advocates the theory in question, 
but not on these grounds, but as an inference from his general theological and 
philosophical position, that God is the only agent, and that in him we perceive 
as well as produce every object in the universe. 

§ 296. A class of theories of historical importance com- 

The theory 

which resolves prehends all those which resolve this relation between 

causality into a , . . t , . -t . , 

relation of con- things into some a priori relation between concepts — 
in other words, into some logical axiom, principle, or 
relation. The fallacy common to all these consists in inverting the 
order of nature and of reason. A correct estimate of logical relations 
and principles would show that they are all dependent upon some 
assumed reality of things. Among such realities, the relation of 



§ 297. CAUSATION AND THE RELATION OF CAUSALITY. 495 

causality is prominent and fundamental. It cannot be derived 
from the laws of identity and contradiction, which as we have 
shown concern concepts only and are designed to hold the mind 
to consistency in their use. 

It has not been uncommon with the philosophers of the late* 
German Schools to seek to resolve the principle of causality into 
the principle of the sufficient reason viewed as a logical axiom 
This follows from not clearly determining and carefully keeping 
in mind the relation of the ratio essendi to the ratio cognoscendi 
in the principle of the sufficient reason itself. Because the logical 
reason is more general or extensive in its application than the real 
cause, they have resolved cause into reason, instead of explaining 
reason by means of the relation of cause. We have already shown, 
under Deduction, that the syllogistic process, and indeed all logical 
reasoning supposes the ratio essendi, i. e., real causal action, or 
that which may be conceived as such, and that without this all 
deduction is meaningless and inconclusive, (§§ 221, 2.) 

This inversion of the real order of the dependence of these con- 
ceptions may be traced to Wolff and Kant. Kant sanctioned it by 
the suggestion that is fundamental to his system, that the forms 
of thought are not necessarily representative of the forms of be- 
ing. Kant makes the relation of causality to be a metaphysical 
relation of that explicability of one concept by another which is 
required by the logical faculty, instead of a real relation of 
things. 

It has been carried to its furthest extreme by Hegel in the fun- 
damental position of his philosophy which he boldly attempted to 
make universal, viz., that all the so-called relations of being 
may be developed from and are resolved into relations of 
thought, so that the actual world is but the necessary evolution 
of the relations that belong to the logical concept. The relation 
of the reason to its consequent, and by consequence, of cause to 
effect, is only a special application of that law of identity; misin- 
terpreted by his logic, which is properly applied only in the sphere 
of abstract thought. 

§ 297. Another theory called a priori is the theory 
advanced by Sir William Hamilton, (Met, Lee. 39, theory™ cau! 
40.) This theory derives our conceptions of, and our satlon - 
belief in, this relation, not from a power, but an impotence of 



49t> 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§297. 






mind ; in a word, it resolves it into the more general "principle 
of the conditioned^ The law of the conditioned is, that the " con- 
ceivable has always two opposite extremes, and that the extremes 
are equally inconceivable. That the conditioned is to be viewed 
not as a power, but as a powerlessness of mind is evinced by this 
— that the two extremes are contradictories, though neither alter- 
native can be conceived or thought as possible, one or other must 
be admitted to be necessary." 

This general powerlessness gives the special relation of causal- 
ity, when applied to the two positive forms under which every 
object is and must be conceived, viz., existence and time. By the 
necessity of the first, the mind cannot but think of every object 
as existing. It cannot, if it tries, think of anything as not ex- 
isting. By the second the thing existing is not now what it was 
a moment before. We cannot think of any object as non-existing 
in the present. ~No more can we think of the same as non-exist- 
ent in the past. "We cannot think of its absolute commencement 
in the past, nor can Ave think of its absolute termination in the 
future. We can neither think of its absolute non-commencement 
nor of its infinite non-termination. " This gives us the categr >iy 
of the conditioned as applied to the category of existence under 
the category of time." 

By this application of the principle of the conditioned, the 
principle of causality is gained. For the law of causality is 
simply this, that when an object appears to commence in time, we 
cannot but suppose that the complement of existence which it 
contains has previously existed ; " in other words, that all we at 
present come to know as an effect, must previously have existed 
in its causes." 

According to this theory, the cause or causes of an object are 
the sum of the constituent elements of its being, existing at a pre- 
vious time in a different form ; the effects are the same as 
existing in another form at a subsequent time. This applies to 
every form of causation, even to the creation of the universe. 
For creation is not a springing of nothing into something ; " it is 
conceived, and is by us conceivable merely as an evolution of a 
new form of existence by the fiat of the Deity." 

The objections to this explanation of the relation of causation, 
as taught by Hamilton, are the following : 






§ 297. CAUSATION AND THE RELATION OF CAUSALITY. 497 

(1.) It is not true that it is an original and necessary belief, 
that the complement of existence is not changed with the changes 
of phenomena. For example, when a pile of fuel is consumed 
by fire, and only an inconsiderable residuum of ashes remains, 
men do not necessarily and instinctively assert that the total of 
the original constituents of the fuel is undiminished. So far is 
this from being true, that, on the other hand, they are slow to ac- 
cept the evidence furnished by the more careful experiments of 
science, that the products, when analyzed and gathered after com- 
bustion, equal the elements of the substance before it was 
burned. 

(2.) The asserted impossibility to think an object as non-existent 
is a logical, not a real impossibility. We cannot think any thing 
not to be in thought, because, while we think of it, it must exist 
for us as thought. Even when we think of it as not existing, 
whether in the present or in the past, we must first think of it as 
existing in thought, and to this object as existing in thought we 
deny existence in fact. If we think of a centaur or a hip- 
pogriff, we must think of it as being. If, because we cannot 
think of an object actually existing to be non-existent, we may 
infer that the complement of its existence does not change, we 
may also infer that, because we think of a centaur and a hippogriff 
as existing, they both in fact exist. 

(3.) The theory is utterly inadequate to explain psychical 
causality. The operations of the soul are, as we have seen, 
eminently causal. From our conscious experience of this class 
of actions the first notion of causality is derived. Whether the 
effects in question are produced by the action of the soul within 
itself, and are purely psychical, or whether they are wrought in 
the nervous organism by the soul ; whether they are wrought 
upon matter by the soul, or upon the soul by matter ; in each 
of these cases the theory fails to satisfy. There is no comple- 
ment of existence appearing in different forms at different times. 
Whether the effect is psychical, physiological, or material, is not 
conceived as the same constituents under a new form. It is what 
the terms denote it to be — a product, an effect, a result of 
activity, a consequent of the powers and activities which are re- 
quired for and appropriate to the result. 

(4.) It is still more incongruous with any right notion of crea 



498 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§297, 









tive causality. The creation of matter or of mind implies the 
production or origination into existence of that which did not 
previously exist in any of its constituents. It is called by Ham- 
ilton, " the evolution of a new form of existence by the fiat of 
the Deity." But evolution ought, in consistency with his theory 
to signify the changing of the materials already existing under 
one form into some new form of the existence already in being. 1 
This would require either that we believe in the co-eternity of 
matter with God, and that we restrict the agency of the Deity 
to the exercise of a merely plastic or formative energy, or 
it would involve the pantheistic view, that in the spiritual 
nature or constitution of God there was also present a material 
substance, from which by a new evolution of divine activity, the 
created universe emerged, as a new form of the matter which 
had from eternity existed in God. From spirit as such, from 
a pure spiritual essence, it cannot be conceived that matter 
should be evolved, in any consistency with the theory of Hamil- 
ton as defined by himself. 

The various attempts to resolve the relation of 

Conclusion. . 

Our position causality into some other relation either a posteriori 

reaffirmed. . . n . _ 

or a priori having tailed to be satistactory, we return 
with greater confidence to the original position which we have 
already explained and defended, that it is original and intuitive. 
The various applications of the relation and principle of causality 
in the processes of the intellect, as well as its significance as an 
assumption fundamental to our higher knowledge, illustrate and 
enforce its importance. 






CHAPTER VI. 

DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 



From the principle or relation of causation we pass by 
a natural transition to the principle of design or adaptation, or, as 
it is usually termed, of final cause. This in an eminent sense, 
is a synthetic relation, and is contrasted with the relation of 
causality as analytic. The movement of the latter is from the 
individual to the general, from the less to the more comprehen- 



§ 299. DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 499 

sive. The movement of adaptation and final cause is from the 
general to the particular and the individual. It unites con- 
stituent elements into constituted wholes. 

$ 298. The term final cause is thus explained : Aristotle and 

the schoolmen divided all possible or conceivable causes into four; pi a i ne d. For- 

the material, formal, efficient, and final. The material causes are m &\ materia! 
»■'»•*'»■' _ m efficient, and 

those material elements or principles of which any existence is fi na i causes. 

composed, whether the matter is bodily or spiritual. The formal 

cause is the property or aggregation of properties which constitute its essence or 

logical content (in Aristotelian phraseology, its form). In these two senses, the 

word cause is equivalent to element or constitutive principle, each differing ac-. 

cording as that which is constituted is matter or form. 

The efficient cause corresponds with the cause of modern philosophy, except 
that it was formerly appropriated to the most conspicuous or prominent of the 
agents or conditions that produce a result ; whereas, in modern usage, the term is 
extended to all those agents which, in combination, originate an effect. 

The final cause was the design or end which was conceived as impelling and 
directing the action of a number or succession of agencies, till it was actually 
brought to pass. The significance of this appellation can be understood by an 
example. If I form a purpose, the event or result when made actual, will be the 
end of a series of events or actions. Hence the end, by a secondary signification, 
is made to signify a purposed result or a design, and the adjective final receives 
the same import. This purpose is called a cause, because it is conceived when 
formed as causing those events or acts which are necessary to its realization. 
Hence the appellation, final cause, — i. e., a cause, which, beginning as a thought, 
warks itself at last into a fact as an end or final result. 

Aristotle called the formal cause ttjv ova-lav koX to tC $v hvat, the material cause 
Trip v\r)v Ka.iTbviroKeifj.evov, the efficient cause '69ev tj apxh Trjs Kivrjcreus, and the final 

cause to o& kveKa /cat Tdya0oV. Met. 1. I. 83 a 27, a 29, a 30, a 31. 

§ 299. The relation of design supposes that agen- . 

cies exist or may exist, which might cause a result adaptation, 

7 • , how related. 

to be. Ihe result is called the end or final cause. 
The capacity of these efficient causes when combined to pro- 
duce the effect is called their adaptation or fitness for it. This 
adaptation may be considered subjectively or objectively. If it is 
viewed as arranged or known by the designer, it is considered sub- 
jectively, i. e., it is a design. But whether it is known or not, the 
capacity for or the possibility of it exists and remains to be disco- 
vered. It pertains to actually existing forces and laws of nature, 
and is a relation which may be affirmed of such causes. A series or 
combination of causes, viewed as fitted for an end are called the 
means — literally the intermediate agencies — between the end as 
thought and the end as produced. 



500 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§301. 



asJumedlfn*- is that this relation is believed 

cessary and a jj 
■priori. M™ 



§ 300. The position which we assert and defend 
is believed a priori to pervade 
existence, and must be assumed as the ground oj 
the scientific explanation of the facts and phenomena 
of the universe. We do not inquire whether this relation is ex- 
emplified in our experience as a psychological fact, but whether it 
lies at the ground of all our knowledge as a necessary relation of 
things, and a first principle or axiom of thought — whether, in 
other words, the principle of adaptation ranks with the principle 
of efficient causation as a necessary and a priori truth. 

We assert that the relations and laws ascertained by asking the 
questions why and how, are not the only relations conceivable, 
but that others hold the same place in our knowledge, 
viz., those which the question what for requires as its an- 
swer. Among his four causes, Aristotle gave the highest pre- 
eminence to the oo ivsxa or the what for. Was Aristotle right in 
assuming that the end is as important to be known as the defini- 
tion, the constituents and the origination of a being or a phe- 
nomenon ? 

§ 301. Our reasons for the truth of this position 

Reasons. The 

mind impelled are the following : 

jects by this (1.) The mind is impelled to seek, and is satisiied 
when it finds that any objects or events are related as 
means and ends. Whatever these objects may be which are con- 
nected under this relation — whether they are individuals that fill 
only single points in space and endure but for a moment of 
time, or classes of beings that pervade the universe by their 
agency, and endure with energy unwasted from generation to 
generation — the mind inquires, for what do these exist and act ? 
and if it can find an answer, it accepts it with rational satisfac- 
tion. 

It asks the question and accepts the answer in a way precisely 
analogous to that in which it inquires and learns, By what 
agency and under what law does any thing exist and act ? It 
asks as pressingly and as persistently, concerning what it may 
find in this relation, as concerning what it can know under tht? 
relation of causation. When it receives a probable answer, it 
welcomes it with a more complete and a higher satisfaction than 
a similar explanation by efficient causes and their laws. This 



§ 303. DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 501 

ground of analogy would lead us to believe that the two relations 
are both original and intuitively assumed. 

§ 302. (2.) The relations under which this axiom 
requires that objects should be connected, is higher higher dl than 
than any of those which arise under the category of causa tio e ]? cieDt 
efficient or blind causative force. 

The relation of means to ends supposes that of cause and effect. 
We must first suppose causes or agents to exist, before we can 
suppose them to be applied or employed as means. But when 
forces and their laws are ascertained, and by them unity and 
order and dependence are established among the otherwise dis- 
connected beings and events of the universe, the mind takes a 
step higher in its aspirations, seeking to rearrange under more 
elevated relations the objects united under the lower. The one 
class being presumed, and in part at least successfully established, 
the mind believes that a higher is possible, and proceeds to dis- 
cover it. Subjectively viewed, this relation gives a higher satis- 
faction. Objectively regarded, it stands higher in rational value 
than that of efficient causation, which is only a stepping-stone 
and preparation for it. 

§ 303. (3.) The principle has been of essential ser- 
vice in scientific discovery. Should it be conceded that The prinC j pl , 
the appropriate sphere of science proper is to develop s e ^ t ? a 7 n S ef V i ? ce 
and establish the so-called powers and laws of nature, 53 SCOY s e c r ientific 
and that the discovery of adaptations lies without its 
sphere, it would still be true that the belief that the universe 
is full of such adaptations, is of essential service in suggesting 
powers and laws previously undeveloped and undetermined. The 
history of scientific discovery abounds in confirmations of this 
truth. 

When Harvey observed at the outlet of the veins and the rise 
of the arteries, certain curiously constructed valves, — those in 
the one, opening inward towards the heart, and in the other, open- 
ing outward away from the same, he was persuaded that the 
arrangement indicated an end which supposed activities and laws 
which he proceeded to ascertain and determine. 

Further illustrations of the value of this principle in scientific 
discovery will be given when we treat of its application to the 
several sciences. Cf. § § 316 seq. 



502 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§305. 









The Founda- § 304. (4.) The entire superstructure of the "inductive 
ductivVpmios- Philosophy rests upon the principle in question. 
ophy * It has already been shown that the Inductive 

method rests on several assumptions. They are such as these : 
nature is uniform in her operations and laws ; the indications or 
signs of less obvious powers and laws may be confided in ; the 
analogies of nature are important means of suggesting facts and 
laws, and of inciting to experiment and discovery ; the simplest 
relationships, the fewest agencies, and the most economical uses of 
forces are always presumed. These and other like axioms of the 
student of nature are but varied applications of the principle in 
question, viz., that in the universe objectively considered, there is an 
intelligent and wise adaptation of powers and laws to rational ends, 
and that the same is true of the relation of the universe to the 
knowing mind. 

It is not sufficient for the philosopher to say that without these 
assumptions, the science of nature itself would be impossible, in- 
asmuch as the conception of science requires that powers should 
be fixed, and laws should be uniform, and indications and analo- 
gies should be trustworthy — that were science not to assume the 
truths of these maxims she would commit suicide. To this it is 
pertinent to reply, What if science itself should be impossible ? 
What is the imperative necessity for science ? Every reply to 
these questions implips that the adaptations of nature to the 
methods and impulses of the knowing mind are such as indi- 
cate at least that class of designs in the structure of the universe 
which the possibility of science requires. 

§ 305. (5.) It is also needed to explain those pheno- 

which the relations of 



Required to 

explain the mena of organic existence, 

phenomena . . 

of organic efficient causes are entirely incompetent to resolve or 
even to define. An organic being, or an organism, 
can only be defined as a being of which each organ acts for 
the integrity and well-being of every other organ, and all act 
together for the life of the whole. More abstractly, and in 
the terms of the relation in question, an organism is a being in 
which each of the parts and the whole arc respectively means 
and ends for one another. We find it, in fact, to be true, that 
in any living being, whether plant or animal, the elements or 
organs act together so as to promote t'ne action of each other r 



§305 DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 503 

and of the whole. If the appropriate function of each organ is 
performed, the function of every other is also fulfilled, and when 
all together are exerted they are the conditions of the growth, 
the development and the remaining functions of the plant or 
animal. In the animal, the action of the lungs is necessary to 
that of the heart, and the action of the heart to that of the 
lungs, the action of both to the action of the stomach, and the 
action of the stomach to that of both these, and the mutual 
action of these and the remaining organs, to the health and life 
of the whole body. 

The elements or agents of which these organs are composed, 
have their well ascertained mechanical and chemical properties, 
and when these are combined in inorganic substances, their 
results follow the laws which control them. But when they are 
combined in living beings or their organs, these powers and 
laws do not explain in the least degree these compounds or their 
functions. The materials or agents which form the heart, the 
lungs or the brain, do not at all explain the peculiar substance, 
form, or functions of these organs ; much less do they account 
for the singular capacity which they possess of producing a whole, 
on which they depend for their own existence as a living heart, 
lungs and brain, — which in its turn as a living whole is de- 
pendent on each of these. 

All that we can do, is — within the sphere of the mechanical 
and chemical relations of the constituent elements — to observe the 
resultant products into which they are transmuted ; but the laws 
by which these results are produced, are mostly hidden from view. 
Ths Inductive philosophy, with its efficient causations, is here 
wholly at a loss : It cannot explain how the agents which form the 
vegetable or the animal cell should impart to that least microcosm 
the wonderful power of developing a new cell from within itself, 
or of adding cell after cell to its substance. Much less can it 
explain why or how it is that one cell is the rudiment of a plant 
and another that of an animal — that one expands into this plant, 
and another into that ; one into this animal and another into 
that. All this is totally unknown. The principle of life and 
the conditions of life are only names for causes that cannot h* 
explained by such methods. The effects cannot even be described, 
muoh less explained by the relations of efficient causation. 



504 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§307. 



Under these circumstances we resort to the relation of adap- 
tation and the assumption of design in order to define and ex- 
plain the phenomena. After no other relation than this can we 
explain the fact that dead matter is transmuted into living par- 
ticles, and that aggregates of these particles are developed into 
living organs, which act together so long as the being lives of 
which they are parts. By no other law than that of design can 
we explain how each class of living beings works for itself, having 
a form, habits, tastes, and instincts peculiar to itself, and how 
each individual of each class is an end to itself, having an 
individual form, size, and other peculiarities more or less marked, 
according to its rank and place in the scale of being. 

§ 306. Two facts are here suggested touching the 

Relation of . te& ° 

final to effici-nt relation of final to efficient causes. The first is that 

causes in tlv> i -i • i • i r» i • 

higher orders the higher we rise in the scale of being, the less we 
know of the relations of efficient causes; while those 
of final cause are more and more various and conspicuous. In un- 
organized matter we have occasion chiefly to apply efficient 
causes and their unvarying laws. As we ascend into the regions 
of life, we are more and more baffled in our attempts to detect the 
elementary forces and to determine their unvarying laws, but are 
more and more gratified at seeing the relations of adaptation be- 
come more and more conspicuous. The second is, That one of these 
relations does not displace the other, and the discoveries in respect to 
the one neither compel nor allow us to dispense with the search 
after the other. On the contrary, the more complete is our 
analysis of efficient forces and our determination of their laws, 
the greater is the opportunity to notice how the structure whose 
constituents are resolved by analysis, is controlled by manifest 
fitness and adaptation. Each newly discovered element and 
determined law opens an opportunity for some adaptation as yet 
unobserved. 

§ 307. To the doctrine that the belief in design is 
Men mistake in intuitive, the following are urged as objections: 
meTts aw I- (1.) Men mistake in discovering or assigning ends, 
and the mistakes into which they fall are irrational 
and foolish ; whatever man in his selfishness and limitation may 
think important to himself, be thinks must have been designed 
\q the economy of nature, and thus is exposed to the danger of 



§ 309. DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 505 

setting up his narrow and interested judgments as the real adap- 
tations and intents of the Creator. 

It is sufficient to reply that, if men mistake in assigning the 
ends of phenomena, they do the same in interpreting their effi- 
cient causes. We do not raise the question whether men can dis- 
cover particular ends with infallible certainty, but whether they 
intuitively believe there are ends to which all beings and agents 
are adapted, and for which they are designed. 

§ 308. (2.) It may be objected that we have no 
means of testing and confirming our inductions in pretatioDa can 

. _ neither bo 

respect to ends, while in respect of causes and laws tested nor con- 
we are provided with tests, rules and methods which 
are universally acknowledged to be amply sufficient. " In ordinary 
cases the methods of agreement, of difference, and of concomitant 
variations are acknowledged to be ample: In special exigencies 
artificial experiments may be instituted to supplement the defi- 
ciencies of simple observation : But in ascertaining ends we have 
no such methods, tests, or experiments." 

We reply: It will be found on closer inspection, that the 
methods appropriate to the two are more nearly alike than would 
be at first imagined. It has been already shown, that the end or 
purpose, in its relations to the means of its realization, may bo 
conceived of as an efficient force carried back from the end to 
the beginning of the series of causes and effects, which drives 
them to their issue by a constant energy. If this be so, the 
question, What is the particular end of a combination or series? 
may be answered by the methods appropriate to efficient 
causes. It may in some cases be less easy to conjecture the 
probable end than it is to conjecture the probable cause, inasmuch 
as many such ends might in a given case, be supposed to be 
equally compatible with the effects. But, on the other hand, in 
other departments of nature, as the organic and historical, the ends 
and adaptations flash upon the mind without the need of inquiry 
or tests of any kind, while in these very departments the efficient 
forces usually elude the most subtle analysis, and refuse to yield 
to the most exact and rigorous methods. 

§ 309. (3.) It may be still further objected that the 
adaptation of means to ends is an actual relation, of ion derived 
which toe are aware from our own conscious activity, experience ™ 
22 



506 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§ 310. 



and it is simply by a fiction that we transfer it to other, i. e., to 
material objects. 

To this objection we reply, that the activity of our own souls 
and the relations which are instanced or exemplified in our con- 
scious mental and moral functions, hold precisely the same rela- 
tion to efficient as to final causes. The most complete knowledge, 
we may say the only complete knowledge, which we have of 
power or efficiency, is gained through or by means of the active 
energy of our own spirits. By this, we in a certain sense image, 
cf. § 206, this abstract relation whenever we have occasion to 
affirm it of impersonal or material agents. In doing so, we use 
examples, associations, and language taken from our personal 
activity. It is not true, however, that we affirm this relation of 
all the objects in the universe, because we have happened to 
experience its agency in our own spirits. It is by an intuition 
that we affirm it to be necessary to a rational construction of the 
universe. But this very objection itself suggests an argument 
in defence of the propriety of making a similar application of 
final cause. The power of adapting means to ends is one with 
which we ourselves are very familiar in our own conscious ex- 
perience. We propose ends. We devise and arrange, i. e., adapt 
means to bring them to pass. We interpret the actions of others 
by supposing that they are directed by such intentions and adap- 
tations. We interpret the results of their actions when they are 
fixed and made permanent in structures controlled by the same 
relation. It is a fair argumentum ad hominem to use 
in reply, when it is objected that we interpret the uni- 
verse by a relation derived from our uniform and per- 
sonal experience, that in this experience we have an 
agency directed in part, at least, by design. The agency is spiritual, 
which first proposes ends and then adapts forces for their achieve- 
ment. It is certainly possible or supposable that the results of a 
similar agency should pervade the universe, and make themselves 
manifest in discoverable adaptations. To assume or employ it in 
the explanation of phenomena is not necessarily unphilosophical. 
§ 310. (4.) It may be objected still further, that 
cfpie^ WO intro- if we recognize final cause as a principle, we introduce 
i into phi- .^ +rt +T ^ Q „ T> ;„ QTOfi f or the explication of its phe- 



The relation 
unquestioned 
in some appli- 
cations. 



losophy which 1DXO 
may possibly 
conflict. 



the 
nomena, 



universe, 

two principles, of which the one may at 






§311. DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 507 

times conflict with the other. In so doing we weaken confidence 
in the processes and axioms of pure science, and in the stability 
of the laws and the order of nature. Science, it is contended, 
must assume not only the stability but the supremacy of its own 
laws, and it can neither recognize nor respect any other. 

It may be urged in reply that the principle of final cause, is so 
far from weakening our rational confidence in the stability of 
the laws of nature or disturbing our faith in the axioms of 
science, that it confirms both. What science blindly assumes, 
this rationally accounts for and makes necessary. It gives a 
reason for the order of nature and the principles of knowledge ; 
and the only reason which can be suggested, viz., the adaptation 
of such order to the uses and ends of the human intellect, and 
of human science. As we have shown already, it furnishes 
the only solid foundation for the assumptions of induction. 

But it will still be objected ; if efficient causes and physical 
laws are to acknowledge themselves thus indebted to final causes, 
they must also confess their subjection to the same, and be ready 
to stand aside and be suspended whenever the principle of final 
cause shall require. In other words, the order of nature may be 
broken whenever the requirements of final cause shall so direct, 
whenever the claims of the so-called reason of things, or of al- 
leged moral and religious interests may demand an inroad upon 
this regularity, either in special acts of creation or exertions of 
miraculous agency. This we assent to, but, we find no reason on 
this account to reject the principle or its asserted supremacy, but 
an additional reason for accepting both. If the principle of final 
cause will not only render the service of sustaining our confi- 
dence in the stability of the laws of nature in all ordinary cir- 
cumstances, but will also account for such extraordinary devia- 
tions from this order as may be required in the history of man, 
then for this double service it deserves to be esteemed of greater 
value and authority. [Cf. Locke, Essay, B. iv. c. xvi. § 13.] 

§ 311. (5.) It is objected still further, that the 

1 O n 1 17 7 7 7 ( 5> ) The Seal ' Ch 

search after final causes has seriously hindered the after final 

. . causes has hin- 

aavancement of science, by turning aside the atten- dered discov- 
tion and interest of observers from their appropriate 
duty, which is the investigation and determination of efficient 
causes and their laws. 



508 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§311 



Lord Bacon, it is said, was so alive to its evil influence as to 
utter his memorable and oft-repeated caution in the words: 
" Causarum finalium inquisitio sterilis est et tanquam virgo Deo 
consecrata nihil parit." — De Aug. Sclent, III. 4. Descartes was 
still more strenuous in the same opinion, as appears from these 
assertions : " Totum illud causarum genus quod a fine peti solet 
in rebus physicis nullum usum habere existimo ; non enim absque 
temeritate me puto posse investigare fines Dei." — Med. iv. 20. 
" Ita denique nullas unquam rationes circa res naturales a fine 
quam Deus aut natura in iis faciendis sibi proposuit discernimus, 
quia non tantum debemus nobis arrogare ut ejus consiliorum nos 
esse participes putemus." — Princ. Phil, p. I. 28. 

To this objection we reply : That what Bacon intended was 
that the attention of the inquirer should not be diverted from the 
investigation of efficient causes by the suggestion of ends or 
adaptations, for the appropriate sphere of the interpreter of 
nature is to develop agents and laws that are unknown, or newly 
to confirm and exemplify those already established. In this he 
was right. But, that Bacon himself believed that nature is 
penetrated and illumined by the higher relations of design is 
evident from this among similar intimations : " I had rather be- 
lieve all the fables in the Legend and the Talmud and the Alco- 
ran, than that this universal frame is without a mind." * * 
" For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes 
scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further; 
but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and 
linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and the Deity." — 
Essays, xvi. 

When Bacon says that the inquiry after final causes is without 
fruit, he must mean ' practical fruit,' or the production of direct 
advantage to the interests of man. It is, in fact, so far from 
being barren, that as we have already seen, § 303, the considera- 
tion of ends has been fruitful in the suggestion of undiscovered 
agencies as their means, and has thus proved itself a most impor- 
tant agent in such discoveries. It has been more efficient in leading 
to the prudens qucestio, the sagacious guess, or the ingenious hypothe- 
sis, which has so often opened the way for decisive experiments. 
If our doctrine is correct, that the methods and rules of induction 
themselves rest upon the belief in design, then final cause is so 



§ 312. DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 500 

far from being barren that she deserves to be honored as the 
Alma Mater of the Inductive Philosophy itself. 

§ 312. (6.) It is objected again, that what (? . )Thoadttpto . 
are called the adaptations of nature, are only tions of , natr -' e 

r # ' •'are only the 

the necessary conditions of existence and its pheno- conditions of 

° " ■*- existence. 

mena. 

When, for example, the eye is said to be adapted to the light, 
and both to the production of vision, this says the objector, is 
only another phrase for saying that the eye as we find it, acting 
with the light as we find it, produces its pictures upon the retina, 
and these acting with the intellect and sentient organism, produce 
the sense-perceptions which we call vision. "What are called the 
ends of nature, to which her forces are said to be adapted, are 
simply the effects of which these forces are the necessary and 
actual conditions. The fish, we say, is adapted in its structure 
and its instincts to the water, and the water exists with relation 
to the fish, but the truth is that there could be no fish without 
water, for without water, the existence and conception of the fish 
are impossible. We know what appears, i. e., what is made mani- 
fest, and we know it under the single relation of the forces which 
cause it to be. This is the only relation under which we can regard 
it. As to whether other effects might or might not have been pro- 
duced from these causes in different conjunctions and intensities, 
we have no means of deciding. Whether other effects may not 
be produced in future we cannot say. All that we know is what 
has been, and now is, and by what means. These have been, and 
are, and occur under the operation of these very causes and laws. 
We inquire concerning the actual conditions of things, not con- 
cerning possible designs. 

In reply to this class of objections, we need only say that they 
apply, not to the position that the belief in final cause is a first 
principle, but to the doctrine that this belief is derived from ob- 
servation and required by experience. If the principle is intui- 
tive and a priori (in the sense explained, § 246), we bring it with 
us to the explanation of the facts. We do not derive it from ex- 
perience by an a posteriori method, but we apply it to experience 
by one that is purely a priori. It is true, if facts and phenomena 
were inconsistent with the principle, we should be embarrassed 
by the discrepancy of the two. But no incompatibility is urged, 



510 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§3U 



(7.) Adapta- 
tion is limited 
to organic ex- 
istence. 



only that final causes are not proved by experience. It is 
conceded that the explanation by efficient causes is not incon- 
sistent with that by final causes, inasmuch as it is through effects 
actually produced that we infer these effects were intended and 
provided for. 

But we take issue with the position that we find nothing more 
than the conditions of existence. We find not simply the condi- 
tions of mere existence in the causes of effects produced, but the 
conditions of well-being, or adaptations to a highly artificial, ele- 
vated, and refined existence and enjoyment ; and these in forms 
so manifold as to be entirely consistent with the a priori princi- 
ple which we bring to the explanation of the facts. The illus- 
trations of this assertion can only be gathered from the study of 
individual examples. 

§ 313. (7.) It may be objected again: that adapta- 
tion can only be traced in fact in a limited class of 
phenomena, viz., those of organized existence, 
whereas were it necessarily presumed it might be dis- 
cerned in all kinds of being, the inorganic as truly as the organic. 
It is sufficient to reply that examples can be found in every 
kind of object-matter as will be shown in another place. They 
are more striking within the region and sphere of life, indeed, 
but are not less real beyond that sphere. Besides, this axiom is 
the foundation on which rests the structure of the inductive 
method, which is as often applied to inorganic as to organic- 
being. This makes it necessary to apply it to every kind and 
style of existence. 

§ 314. (8.) It might also be urged that we cannot 
trace or interpret adaptations on a scale sufficiently 
extensive to warrant our affirming that they exist 
throughout the whole universe of being. " We may ; 
indeed, guess at them within a limited range of observation. 
But it is presumptuous to assume that we can trace the adapta- 
tions and discover the ends of the entire universe." 

If this were admitted to be true, it would not hold against the 

principle that ends exist, and that adaptations to them regulate 

all the things that are. It is for the principle that we contend, 

not for infallibility in the application of it to individual cases. 

The same law holds good of final causes as of efficient 



(8.) We are not 
warranted in 
affirming it of 
all kinds of ex- 
istence. 



§ 315. DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 511 

causes. That both exist, and both control the universe is known 
to the human mind by the necessity of its nature. The discovery 
of instances and examples of each is accomplished by experi- 
ence and induction. Both can be traced by observation in but 
few classes of objects, and within that portion of the universe 
only which comes under our eye or ear, or the report of our fel- 
low-men. 

But the one can be traced as far as the other. "What is connected 
with its fellow as adapted to an end under this relation, is an ef- 
ficient agent or force. If we can trace gravitation as far as the 
utmost verge of material being, we can also affirm that it was 
designed to hold the masses in their relative positions and their 
paths of motion. The principle of final cause moreover is abso- 
lutely required to warrant the extension of the relations of effi- 
cient causes observed within a limited sphere, throughout those 
regions of which observation and testimony can give only an 
uncertain and incomplete report. 

§ 315. (9.) Last of all it may be said, that the 
recognition of this as a first principle would require cannot*^ X aS 

• -I • , ,. it !_• , firmed of anun- 

US to ascribe mtention and adaptation to an un- limited Being. 

limited Being, whereas it supposes certain forces or 
powers already given or existing, and the problem arises how to 
dispose of these so as to attain or produce the designed result. 
Such a problem can never, it is contended, be presented to an 
unlimited Being, who, by the very supposition, is not confined to 
forces or agencies which already exist, but can produce effects by 
a fiat of creative will. Moreover, the supposition would introduce 
into such a mind and order the reverse of the rational. It would 
make the production of agencies go before the disposition of 
them to an end. It would make blind force precede wise fore- 
cast. 

None of these inferences are warranted. Because in the order 
of design thought must recognize the possible adaptations of 
forces, it does not follow that the forces must exist in order to be 
thought of as existing, or in order that certain adaptations should 
be determined on. Both, indeed, may be objects of design, the ex- 
istence of the forces and their adaptations ; or, rather, the 
existence of the forces because of their adaptations to accomplish 
some end or ends of thought. Even the human mind, impotent as 



512 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §316. 

it is to create, sometimes imagines to itself, *. e., creates in thought 
some new agent in the world of matter or of spirit, and revels in 
contriving the variety of uses to which it might make it subser- 
vient. How much more readily may that Being whose thoughts 
can in any instant become powers, laws, and facts ! 

§ 316. But the most instructive view which we can 
f be mif^—d * a k e °^ * n * s principle is to contemplate the variety of 
nnd confirmed, its applications. It has alreadv been observed that 

by its applica- - 1 J - 

tfons (i.) to First or Intuitional Truths, are never apprehended 

metaphysics. . . . A 

in actual application as general propositions. They 
can only be discerned in the concrete, as they actually connect indi- 
vidual things or phenomena. Thus we cannot discern causation 
or adaptation as universal and a priori ; we only discern an event 
or being as causative or caused, as a means or an end. When we 
appeal to the use which is made of these relations in the sciences 
as proof that they are fundamental and intuitive, we expect to 
find that these sciences constantly assume these relations to be 
valid, by explaining phenomena by means of them. The con- 
stant repetition of this relation and the important uses to which 
it is applied add incidental strength to the positive arguments for 
regarding it as an intuition of the intellect. 

1. The first application which we notice is that which is made 
by metaphysical science itself. "We have already insisted on its 
importance in sustaining the metaphysical axioms of Induction. 
Upon this we need not dwell. 

Its application in the formation and arrangement of those gen- 
eral conceptions which are at once the materials and the 
conditions of all science, is of equal consequence, though perhaps 
not equally obvious. 

(a.) The principle of final cause regulates the formation of 
concepts. We have already seen that so far as the form of the 
concept is concerned, it is by abstraction or analysis that we 
separate the qualities or attributes of existing beings, and by 
synthesis unite them into new and generalized products. These 
processes regulate the form but not the import of the concept. 
We are not at liberty to select any attributes which analy- 
sis gives us and to unite them into any complex notion which 
they might form. Some are adapted by logical compatibility to 
be conjoined, while others are not so fitted. 



§316. DESIGN OFw FINAL CAUSE. 513 

But again : not all the attributes which are logically compati- 
ble are, in fact, united into concepts by any earnest thinker. The 
centaur, the mermaid, the hippogriff, are logically possible, but 
not actual. Why ? Because the properties or attributes which 
constitute them are not adapted to exist together in the same be- 
ing, and, of course, except for the service of the fancy, are neve: 
combined. There is something in these properties, or in what 
they represent, which fits them to co-exist, or they could not with 
any reason be combined in a concept which connects the rational 
and real ; which represents things as actual or possible, or con- 
templates them as designed to be under existing powers or Taws. 

(6.) The same principle must be assumed in tha arrange?nent 
of a system of concepts as genera and species. 

It is evident, that as we might make as many concepts as the va- 
ried aggregations of single attributes would allow, so these might 
be arranged into as many genera and species as the fertile law 
of permutation and combination would permit. Any one attri- 
bute might be taken as generic without regard to its actual 
extent in nature ; with this any other might be combined an a 
differentia without regard to the compatibility of the two as pro- 
vided by the adaptations of nature's laws. It is contended by 
some, that in the classifications which we actually make, we are 
guided by mere convenience, that we can make any attribute ge- 
neric which we please, provided it be more extensive than its 
differentia in its actual prevalence, but that there are no such 
things as real genera and species ; these terms having no mean'ng 
in such an application. If we assume that there are no affinities 
or adaptations in properties and laws, and no ends to which 
the powers of nature are adapted, and which are designed to be 
permanent, this view is correct. But the moment we assume that 
such adaptations exist, and that they can be discovered by ob- 
servation and induction, then the belief in permanent classes is 
justified and explained. 

(c.) This relation is essential to an intelligible conception and 
definition of an individual. 

{d.) The principle is of the greatest value as a criterion 
of truth and a rule of certitude. When skepticism suggests that 
every principle may be questioned, and every observation of fact 
may be mistaken ; that the objective creation may be a shift':;<r 

22* 



514 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§317. 



phantasmagoria, and the subjective mind but a lying glass of 
opinion; then the thought of the inconceivable non-adaptation 
of such a universe to any rational end even of knowledge, re- 
stores our confidence in the testimony of the senses, the experi- 
ences of consciousness, and the inductions of thought. We try 
all these indeed by one another, after the tests which experience 
and science have discovered, but we trust them only when they 
conspire to ends that are worthy of rational order in a universe 
adapted to be known by a being who is manifestly designed to 
know, and to confide in his knowledge when it is properly tested 
and proved. 

§ 317. 2. In the Mathematics even, the presence 
m ?Fr:cai m c ?>n -~ of this relation is recognized. 

struction and t , i t i i> 

deduction. In pure geometry it may be applied more fre- 

quently than would be anticipated. The circle is 
adapted to prove a great variety of theorems, and to solve many 
problems, as is exemplified in any treatise on geometry. If we are 
required to construct two triangles on the same base, the angles 
of which at the apex of each shall be right angles, it can readily 
be done by describing a half-circle on this line as a diameter, and 
any number of triangles can at once be drawn so as to fulfill the 
required conditions. We discern in a portion of space bounded 
by a half-circle, this capacity or adaptation, that waited long to 
be discerned. 

The relations of pure number open as wide a field of inherent 
fitnesses to serve the ends of the student. It is upon the faith that 
additional adaptations remain to be discerned that the mathema- 
tician prosecutes his work of inventive discovery. 

The adaptations of the mathematics to the service of physics 
are if possible still more striking. No projectile was ever thrown 
in an exact parabola ; yet the theory of this curve is adapted to 
explain the direction and motion of every body that is launched 
into the atmosphere. The theory of the lines in which bodies 
tend to move, and the rates in which bodies move in fact 
when impelled, is adapted to regulate the mechanics of bodies as 
they fall to the earth, and the motions of the orbs which revolve 
in the heavens. It also explains the phenomena of the pressure 
of fluids. The relations of number solve the mystery of chemi- 
cal combinations : they explain the symmetry of agreeable forms 



§ 318. DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 515 

and the harmony of musical sounds. They enable us to discern 
a common law in the arrangement of the leaves upon the stem 
of every tree, and in the placing of the planets along the lines 
which stretch out from the sun. 

On the first thought, it would seem that in extension and 
number it would be impossible to find so great a variety of possi- 
ble adaptations. But on reflection, we find that their capacity of 
multiform application is the only key to the perfection of the sciences 
of matter and the reduction of its forces to unvarying laws. 

We have urged that the belief in final cause must be intuitive, 
because we could not otherwise confide in the axioms of induc- 
tion. But we see in the provision for the possibility of mathe- 
matical science, and of its universal application to material 
phenomena as the indispensable condition of their laws, another 
example of design where we had least expected its manifestations, 
viz., in those time and space relations which render the mathe- 
matics possible. 

§ 318. 3. Geology and Paleontology both assume 
the truth and applicability of the principle of final ogyjetc ; m ge ° 
cause. 

Geology was at first content to explain the formation of the 
crust of the globe by analyzing its parts into their constituent 
elements, and recording the order in which the rocks had been 
compacted and broken down, and the strata had been formed and 
deposited. In these investigations it proceeded as a science of 
observation, watching and recording the operations of the forces 
of nature according to laws already ascertained. 

But, aided by paleontology, geology has proposed to itself a 
higher problem, and contemplated facts under more elevated re- 
lations. It has traced a plan and order of development resting 
on the assumption of a series of ends subordinated to one another, 
and terminating in a habitation equally adapted to man's higher 
and lower nature. It has ventured to recall the successive 
phases of organic life by reproducing extinct species of plants 
and animals amid the lakes, marshes and jungles in which they 
sported and from which they subsisted, and to arrange these 
phases in the order of time and of a more and more perfect de- 
velopment. The assumption which has directed these bold essays 
and enabled the geologist successfully to apply the hints fur* 









516 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §319 

nished by facts observed, is, that an order of fitness and progress 
has been followed from the first, and every epoch has pre- 
pared the way for the next succeeding ; the adaptations of each 
being complete in animals, plants, and scenery. Following the 
same clue, this science has found in each previous epoch, not 
merely the materials of the one which succeeded, but the ex- 
istence of a less perfectly developed form of life. This series 
terminates with man, who not only represents the highest type 
of life, but shows that he is the end for which all others are 
designed, by the fact that he alone can comprehend the import 
of the plan and recognize the relations of the parts to the whole, 
and of the whole to himself. 

Geology, by the very aims which it proposes, and the splendid 
results which it has achieved, gives its tacit yet fervent assent to 
the original authority of the intuition of final cause. 
Applied in ge- § 319 ' 4 - Philosophical Geography gives a similar 
hfsto? h ^ and testimony. This science, as conceived and perfected 
by Hitter, takes the earth where geology leaves it, 
and shows how each continent and country was fitted for the 
part which it has played in the world's history, by its structure, 
surface, soil, and climate, by its mountain barriers to repel, and 
its coasts and harbors to invite ; by its river-systems to bind re- 
moter portions, and its insular situation to facilitate defence. It 
shows that every part of the earth was not only adapted from 
the first to receive and develop the race which was allotted to it, 
and to become the scene of events which have made it memora- 
ble, but to transmit the results of these achievements to neigh- 
boring countries and other races, and even to transfer them to 
remote parts of the earth and a later and better civilization. By 
referring intellectual and moral influences to favoring physical 
conditions, it enables us to find an adaptation to important moral 
results, even in the physical arrangements of the earth. 

The Philosophy of History also must assume that the events of 
human history, have occurred in obedience to definite laws regu- 
lating constant forces. Whatever these forces may be called — 
or whatever may be the law of their action, the historian cannot 
seek to interpret or explain them without believing that there 
are definite aims toward which these forces tend, and after which 
they are regulated. 



§ 321. DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 517 

§ 320. 5. Comparative Anatomy rests upon the 
same intuition. It could have no meaning, as it paraSve 1 an* 
would have no truth without it. It is a science of Sffigjf" 1 phy 
similar adaptations, not only of organs to functions, 
but of analogies of form and feature and inner structure to the 
completeness of a progressive plan, and even to the achievement 
of an aesthetic effect and the expression of an aesthetic import. 
Give this science a bone, and it will draw or model the animal, 
tell you how large he was, how formed, on what he lived, what 
were his habits and disposition, what the length of his life, — just 
so far as it reads the adaptations that gather and cluster 
around this fragment of a skeleton, which except as thus inter- 
preted were only a broken and abraded fossil. 

6. In Physiology, special and general, similar relations are 
more numerous and manifest. The departments of animal and 
vegetable life abound, or rather overflow with examples of 
fitness and adjustment. The nicer the analysis of elements and 
of organs, and the more subtle the detection of offices and func- 
tions, so much the more exquisite are the discerned relations of 
adaptation of each to each. Not only is there seen a fitness of 
one organ to another, — as of the lungs to the heart, — and to the 
common end of all, but there is a fitness of every organ to the 
element in and by which it acts,^— as of the lungs to the air and 
of the eye to the light. The more we learn of the structure of 
the one and of the properties of the other, the nicer are the 
adaptations which we discern between the two. 

The adaptations of the body of man to the functions and uses 
of the rational soul, are still more striking; but we here approach, 
if we do not cross, the line which divides physiology from An- 
thropology. 

§ 321. 7. In Anthropology we trace these higher 
adaptations. The human hand does not differ more tropology ; an 
strikingly from the hand of the monkey than the 
mind of the monkey from the mind of man. The mind of man 
has endeavored to discover and combine the powers of nature, 
and to devise the appliances of art. Whatever the mind has 
prompted the hand to construct, the hand has been able to 
frame, either through the seemingly exhaustless versatility of its 
flexible organism, or by the tools and machinery with which it 



518 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 321. 

has contrived to supplement its powers. So wonderful has been 
this service, that it has been questioned, whether the human in- 
tellect or the human hand has been the most conspicuous in 
shaping human destiny and in developing human history. The 
hand has also by the economy of nature been fitted to be the 
medium of conveying varied intellectual and emotional expres- 
sion to the intellect and heart, which have been as mysteriously 
fitted to receive and interpret its indications. The hand invites 
and repels, commands and forbids, soothes and enrages. It ap- 
peases with its gentle waving, and smites with its ferocious energy. 
It adores with the uplifted arm, it blesses with the outspread 
palm; it blasphemes with aimless and impotent motions, and 
curses with its downward stroke. 

But there is no adaptation of the mind and body 
Bions^or^and that gives to both united, an interest which at once 
Slanguage! 163 so fascinates and baffles our prying scrutiny, as that 
exhibited in the agency of both in the production, 
use, and development of language. There are two conditions of 
language, the bodily and the mental. The bodily are also two, 
the mouth and the ear, to which the hand and the eye are acces- 
sory. But for expression the mind must also furnish the material 
through its required capacities and development. Language is 
impossible until the mind observes and generalizes and affirms. 
The mind must first think the material and spiritual universe 
with which it comes in contact, into the thought- world which 
its powers and laws fit it to create, before it can give to it 
expression by language. This adaptation of the vocal and the 
spiritual to each other, and of the possible elaboration of the one 
to the possible refinement of the other, go far beyond any 
observed fitness of the eye to the light, or of the ear to the agent 
of sound. Not only are these two parts of the complex body 
and soul fitted to expand side by side with one another, but the 
expression of thought in language reacts with wondrous energy 
on the development and refinement of thought itself, so that it is 
not only true that the developed thought finds itself able to em- 
ploy language in its service, but it is also true that the thought in 
order to be developed, must express itself in language. Man not 
only »peaks because he thinks, but he speaks in order that he may 
think, i. e., think with clearness, precision and progress. The 



§322. DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 519 

two are not merely so adapted that the one can expand side by 
side with the other, but it is difficult to say which is the most 
dependent on the other. 

The celebrated Galen says, in his treatise concerning the 
human body, that by the variety and accordant action of its ad- 
justments, it seems to utter an anthem of praise to its Maker. 
But the philosopher who reflects on the mystery of human lan= 
guage, in the subtlety of the elements involved, the variety of 
the conjunctions, the delicacy of the structure, and the capacities 
for growth and development, might find, as he watches in the 
lispings of infancy the feeble beginnings of such splendid results, 
a new meaning in the familiar words " Out of the mouths of babes 
and sucklings thou hast perfected praise." 

§ 322. 8. In Psychology the manifestations of 
final cause are more frequent and obvious than in psychology! M 
either physiology or anthropology. 

It is now and then difficult for consciousness to analyze its 
operations under the relations of efficient causation, or to trace 
each product back to the separate force from which it springs 
into being. But the adaptations of these operations and products 
to one another, and to the manifest ends of the soul's culture 
and well being are often so obvious and remarkable, that they 
partially settle questions that would otherwise remain unsolved. 
For example, in considering the acquired perceptions, we find 
that animals possess from the beginning, a capacity of judging 
of distance and size which man is forced to acquire by slow and 
painful effort. We question whether our observations can be 
trusted, whether there is not some error or oversight in the 
analysis of the phenomena. The consideration of the end to be 
accomplished by this arrangement relieves the difficulty. Man, 
we observe, needs the discipline required by the slow process of 
acquiring what the animal knows at the beginning. The con- 
sideration of adaptation removes the similar difficulties suggested 
by the question, "why the range of instinct is so much wider 
and more unerring in the lower animals than it is in man, the 
highest of all?" When we consider the diversity of the destiny 
and ends of the two we accept with less hesitation the evidence 
which observation furnishes. 

Above ail, psychology acquaints us with the rational faculty 



520 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §323. 

as that pre-eminent power which proposes ends and devises means 
for their accomplishment. It acknowledges that this is the 
highest of the intellectual powers, that it is lawfully supreme, that 
in the service of this power we investigate causes and determine 
their laws. In the subjection and adaptation of the lower 
powers to this highest of all it finds confirmation of the propriety 
of assuming the relation of adaptation in all our interpretations 
of nature. If "on the earth there is nothing great but man, 
and in man, there is nothing great but mind," it is emphatically 
true that in the mind there is nothing great but the reason which 
proposes and discovers ends, and is itself an end to the lower 
actings of the intellect. 

§ 323. (9.) Ethics, the science of duty, which is 

Applied and ^ . ' 

assumed iu so closely allied to, if it is not a department of psy- 
chology, is founded entirely upon the intuition in 
question. Its subject-matter is derived from the ends of human 
existence and human activity. The comprehensive and funda- 
mental question which it asks, is, for what kind of activities is the 
human soul adapted by its constitution, and what must man 
be and do to fulfil these ends of his being ? In these inquiries, 
it rests on the single assumption that man is fitted for one 
kind of activity rather than for another, and that the action 
for which he is fitted is right, while the action for whi«h 
he is not fitted is wrong. It asks, how shall these adapta- 
tions be discovered? By what faculty or capacity, one or 
more, are they discerned and responded to? What are the tests 
or criteria by which they are distinguished? What external 
actions or duties must we perform in order most effectually to 
fulfil these several ends of our being ? 

Corresponding to the power of apprehending duty, is the 
faculty of will or choice qualifying man to fulfil the ends for which 
he exists. The existence of this power, its importance to human 
development and responsibility, and the necessity that it should be 
defended in its integrity, explain the necessity of moral trial, and 
the possibility of moral evil — under the one relation of the ends 
which the possession of this power and the exposures which it 
involves are adapted to fulfil. 

The adaptations with which ethics has to do, are chiefly psy- 
chical, and suppose a spiritual organism in the soul — a system of 



§ 324 DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 521 

internal adaptations in the several powers with which it is 
endowed, which indicate our duties and our obligations. These 
all look toward moral perfection. To this the soul is adapted and 
to it it tends and is impelled. Without this intuition and faith 
in its truth, ethics can have no meaning and duty no authority. 
If reason as proposing ends is the highest ruling power in man, 
then the reason, when it discovers and proposes the highest moral 
ends, exercises its loftiest functions, and reigns sovereign over 
the inner and outer world by a self-justified authority. 

§ 324. 10. In Theology, or the science of God, 
whether natural or revealed, this principle is of theology* 1011 * 
supreme importance- The most of the so-called 
demonstrations of the being of God, find their material or 
grounds of proof in the indications of design that are furnished in 
the material universe. 

These arguments are usually stated somewhat 

. " m The common 

thus : Design proves or implies a designer ; The argument for 

i i • -. • r™ n ? the Divine ex- 

uni verse abounds in design ; Inereiore the universe istence. 
implies or proves a designer : or, order and adapta- 
tion imply a designer ; The universe abounds in order and 
adaptation ; Therefore a designer exists. 

The major premise in this argument is obviously assumed or 
received as a priori. The minor is a statement of fact grounded 
on observation or induction. Those who employ this argument 
would not accept the view, that the belief that adaptation prevails 
throughout the universe is a first truth or axiom of thought 
They rest their belief upon observation, and they search through 
the universe to discover instances of the presence of this rela- 
tion. Having observed a sufficient number, they generalize 
them by induction, and then apply, as the minor premise of their 
syllogism, the proposition which they have established by thic 
cumulative evidence. 

We have sought to prove that the proposition affirming final 
causes is a first principle or intuitive truth ; that it is not in any 
sense dependent on observation, but is an original and necessary 
belief or category ; that so far from being derived from induc- 
tion, it is the necessary ground on which induction itself must 
rest for its validity and application. 

Those wh(? accept the relation of final cause as necessary and a 



522 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§324, 




priori may be grouped under two leading classes or divisions, ac- 
cording as the adherents of each reject or accept the belief of a 
personal God. The one class believe in an immanent force, which 
involves no relation to any thing beyond the universe as a whole, 
They fully accept the truth that design rules throughout nature. 
They find examples of the relation of final cause everywhere pre- 
sent. But they insist that these do not necessarily carry the 
thoughts out of nature: Final cause or design is a force in 
nature itself, immanent in each separate object, and in all 
existing objects taken as an organism of parts mutually related 
and connected. 

Those who hold this doctrine, concede that adaptation prevails 
in nature, and must be assumed to explain its powers and opera- 
tions ; also, that it works in every case as though a personal 
mind had contrived these ends and the relations which they in- 
volve, and continues to direct them. But they urge that we are 
not compelled to ascribe this adaptation to a personal being, but 
may refer it to an impersonal, unconscious, unthinking force, 
as blind and unintelligent as the efficient forces that act by me- 
chanical laws. 

The second class contend that the necessary correlate 
to adaptation is a designing mind : They conceive of adap- 
tation as the objective relation to which thought is an 
essential supplement. Adaptation does not prove or in- 
dicate design, but it rationally implies it ; if, therefore, the 
adaptation is real, so is the designing mind. In assuming the 
one truth by an a priori necessity, you must accept the other. 
The belief in adapted things both logically and really carries 
with itself the belief in adapting thought and an adaptive thinker. 
The mind need not necessarily think of the two at the same in- 
stant, or in the same connection. The attention may be so con- 
centrated upon the adaptation objectively considered, its inge- 
nuity, the variety of the means employed, the intricacy and order 
of the combinations required, that it does not consciously refer to 
the correlate, but this fact does not prove that it is not necessarily 
involved. For example: in a machine of human devising, an 
ingenious mind can discern very many adaptations, without ad- 
verting to the mind which produced them, or distinctly recog- 
nizing the fact that it proceeded from any thought ; but as soon 



§ 324. DESIGN OR FINAL CAUSE. 523 

as it raises the question and reflects on the relation, it cannot but 
assent to the additional truth. 

The application of this principle in the service of Natural 
Theology raises still another question ; viz., What relation has 
efficient to final causation in the universe ? Does each require its 
separate principle or agent, or do both united direct us to one 1 
Does the adapting agent simply take the efficient forces and laws 
of the universe as it finds them, and arranging them as best it 
may, bring out of them the wisest results to which its sagacity 
may adapt them, or does it also originate the forces which it ar- 
ranges and combines? The one view gives the eternity of 
matter, with its hindrances and limitations and possibilities of 
evil, making the Deity a Demiurgos or Plastic energy. The 
other makes the originator and the arranger to be the same 
power and the same mind. The one view is the cruder theism of 
Ancient Philosophy, the other the purer theism of the Jewish and 
Christian Scriptures. 

It would carry us too far from our appropriate theme to argue 
here the question between the two. The discussion of it belongs 
to a treatise on Natural Theology. Psychology suggests that 
the analogy of the human soul, which combines in itself — under 
limits — a creating force and an adapting or designing force, 
furnishes a decisive argument in favor of the conclusion, that the 
creator and thinker is One Being. 



524 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 325. 

CHAPTER VII. 

SUBSTANCE AND ATTRIBUTE: MIND AND MATTER. 

§ 325. "We return again to the relation of /S^- 
Uses and . 

Etymology of stoce am Attribute, and to the important application 

the Terms. . 

of it in the determination of the definitions of Mind 
and Matter and of Real and Phenomenal Being. The relation is so 
fundamental and so much discussed in Psychology and Philoso- 
phy, as to require a careful consideration. 

The substance or substratum with which we have to do, is the 
Real substance or substratum. As such it should be carefully dis- 
tinguished from the logical substance or subject. A logical sub- 
ject is any thing which is conceived in thought as a substance 
with attributes, whether it does or does not exist in fact. Thus 
any abstractum can be treated in thought and described in lan- 
guage as though it had real being, and were endowed with real 
attributes. The concepts power, goodness, responsibility, represen- 
tation, republic, wages, wealth, or any other abstract notion, may 
be conceived in thought and treated in language as having prop- 
erties or qualities which are affirmed of each as though it were 
a real being. Real substance ought also to be distinguished from 
the grammatical subject. The grammatical subject is any word 
which is used in language as though it denoted a logical subject. 

The concepts, substance and attribute, cannot be resolved by the 
etymology of the terms which designate them. The words sub- 
ject, substance, substratum, have a common derivation which 
literally imports something standing or lying under, and implies 
that there is something placed above or upon it which may be re- 
moved. This suggests the impression that the attributes are su- 
perinduced upon the substance, as folds or wrappings are thrown 
over or around a nucleus or core within. This prompts to the effort 
to lay off the covering, to separate the wrappings from the nucleus 
which they invest, to scale off the laminae or folds, and find the 
substance or substratum within or beneath, bare of all qualities 
and relations. But the attempt to lay aside qualities in order to 
find their subject is soon discovered to be vain. It is as though 



§ 326. SUBSTANCE AND ATTRIBUTE I MIND AND MATTER. 525 

one should cut down the trees in order to find the forest. It is 
found to be impossible to discover an actually existing subject 
without attributes. The simplest and barest object in the uni- 
verse — that which in its nature is the most uninteresting and the 
most undistinguished — as the mote in a sunbeam, the minutest 
perceptible grain of sand, the atom or molecule which the physi- 
cist cannot perceive, the monad of which the metaphysician con- 
fidently speculates — must always be conceived as having place 
and form, and as involving the relations of extension and force. 

The etymology and use of the terms attribute, quality, property, 
and accident do not give us any greater satisfaction as to the 
nature of the distinction. The term attribute simply directs the 
attention to the fact that we attribute to, or affirm of, a being, 
something which we distinguish from itself; but it does not in 
the least explain what we distinguish or that from which it is 
distinguished. Quality is a term of classification merely, i. e., it 
signifies that the being is of a certain class, without explaining 
why it belongs to the class in question. Property indicates, that 
what we thus attribute or affirm belongs peculiarly or properly to 
the being or substance, and accident that it belongs to it occa- 
sionally. These different words are only different names for the 
same conception, as differently used. But their etymology or 
application throw no light upon the conception itself, or how it 
originates, or why it is distinguished from its correlate substance. 

"We learn, moreover, that we can no more find an attribute 
without substance, than we can find a substance without attri- 
butes. We cannot separate length from something which is long, 
nor color from something colored, nor thought from a thinking 
being, nor joy from a rejoicing being. The two conceptions are 
never parted in the world of real existence. They are not merely 
correlated by a logical necessity, but they are always inseparably 
conjoined in actual existence. 

§ 326. But though substance and attribute do not Sllbstance and 
exist apart, they can be conceived of and defined as ^"abstract 
abstracted from one another. Abstractly considered, 
the concept, substance, is less general than that of simple being. 
Being has already been explained as every object that is, or that 
is conceived to be,knowable or known. But every thing that is 
known is not only known to be, but is also known as related 



526 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 327. 

Hence, with every act of knowledge, the concept of being as re- 
lated, at once arises and becomes universally applicable to every 
object that is known. Certain of these relations may be used to 
distinguish, define, and explain these knowable objects. Any 
being with relations so discerned and applied as to distinguish it 
from other beings, is conceived as a substance, i. e. : a substance is a 
being distinguishable and definable by a complex of relations. 

The conception of attribute arises in a similar way. As soon 
as an object is discerned in a definite relation to another object, 
this relation can be affirmed of or attributed to this object. When 
one relation or more is applied to define or distinguish any one 
of these beings, it becomes an attribute, as used in this generic 
and technical sense. Every relation by which a being is known or 
distinguished is an attribute. 

It deserves to be noticed here that there are also as many 
different substances as there are beings distinguishable in kind by 
combinations of relations. An individual substance is known 
only by the individual relations which it shares with no other. 
The substance is not, however, made up or constituted, by its rela- 
tions. It is not the same thing as a collection of attributes. It is 
distinguished and defined only by these relations. From this 
it is manifest that the category of substance and attribute is 
not simple and original like the other relations or categories 
which we have considered, but is complex and derived. Any 
one of these relations, when employed for the ends of recog- 
nition or description, for definition or classification, for reasoning 
or explanation, in short, for knowledge of any sort, whether com- 
mon or scientific, becomes an attribute. Any existing thing, when 
it is sufficiently permanent or oft-recurring to require to be 
known by attributes, is called a substance. 

There are two classes of objects-matter to which this category 
is most frequently applied, spiritual substances and corporeal sub- 
stances. Abstract ideas, or abstracta, follow the analogy of real 
beings, and so do grammatical subjects. Mathematical entities 
do the same so far as this relation is concerned. We shall con- 
sider the two classes which are here named, and begin with 
spiritual or mental substance. 

Spiritual or § 327. Here we encounter, at the outset, the ob- 
)_ jection or difficulty that a mental or spiritual being 



mental sub- 
stance. 



§327. SUBSTANCE AND ATTRIBUTE: MIND AND MATTER. 521 

cannot be a substance at all. This difficulty is merely verbal, 
and is of purely casual association, arising simply from the 
fact that substance more frequently implies material existence. 
Dismissing this objection as merely verbal and superficial, we 
proceed to inquire in what sense spirit is a substance and what 
are its distinguishing attributes, especially in the form which it 
assumes as the human soul. 

Our previous inquiries have taught us that the prominent attri= 
butes of the substance which we call the human soul are its 
capacities to know, to feel, and to will. But to know, to feel, to 
will, are operations or modes of activity and suffering. These 
capacities are energies, simply causative of certain effects, or 
which involve energies that are causative. These three attri- 
butes obviously fall under the category or relation of causation. 

The power of the soul to be conscious of its acts and states 
is also a capacity for causal efficiency, which like the others is 
known by its exercise and its results. 

But we know more of the substance of the soul than that it is 
the cause or recipient of those effects which we call its states. 
The truth is established by consciousness that the soul knows these 
acts and states to be its own, i. e., to be caused or suffered by the 
individual ego, or self. 

These states and products of the soul's causal activity, are 
transient and changing, while the ego is permanent and enduring. 
As the cause or recipient of these changes the soul is identical 
with itself. They are diverse, the soul is one. The psychical 
attributes therefore require the categories of identity, diversity 
and time, as well as that of causation. 

Besides the attributes of the soul which are revealed in con- 
sciousness, it is capable of acts or processes of which it is conscious 
only of the results in its psychical experience. The capacities for 
these results, whether the results are dependent on psychical or 
material conditions, are also causative, and are therefore properly 
classed among causative attributes. 

Besides the relations of causation there are relations of design 
which pertain to the soul. These are conspicuous both in the 
relations of one power and act of the soul to another, and also 
in the relations of the soul to the external world and to the body 
which connects it with that world. All of these relations are 



528 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 328. 

attributes of the soul ; some of these, however, are so necessary 
to an adequate conception of its nature as to deserve to be con- 
sidered as essential and distinguishing. 

We find then, that those relations of the individual ego by 
which it is usually defined, are its capacities to do and to suffer, 
to know and attain its end or destiny, and these attributes are all 
found in the Categories of Causation and Design. When tc 
these we add its relations of Identity and Time we complete the 
cycle of its attributes. From this analysis we derive the fol- 
lowing definition : That Substance which we call the Human Soul, 
is an identical enduring self, capable of spiritual acts and states in 
the succession of time, which are adapted to certain ends with respect 
to the universe of being. The relation of substance and attribute, 
when thus applied, is that of a being and of certain distinguishing 
or essential relations, as of time, identity, causation and design, 
which appertain to the being. 

§ 328. A material substance, again, is, like spiritual 
BtSe^defined" substance, a being discerned or discernible by intui- 
tive or direct knowledge and also definable by a suffi- 
cient variety and number of relations to distinguish it from other 
beings. These relations are discerned by sense-perception and 
consciousness, and are generalized by thought. A Material Sub- 
stance may be defined: a being occupying definite limits in space, 
and productive of specific sensations in the sentient sou^on occasion 
of which it is perceived or known to exist. 

First of all, it is related to space in trinal extension. It might 
be urged that, in one sense, the spectrum cast by the camera on 
a screen, or the rainbow flung athwart a cloud are material sub- 
stances, with only superficial or binal extension; but material 
substance, in the ordinary sense, has threefold extension, or, as 
we say, extension in three dimensions. 

Corporeal substance has a second relation to space, viz., that 
of space-occupying or space-filling. This is often called the 
solidity or impenetrability of matter, but should be carefully dis- 
tinguished from that power of matter to awaken the sensation 
of hardness, which is also called solidity. The first is a relation 
to space which is tested and expressed by the application of 
notion. The second is the capacity of the body to excite a 
pecific sensation on occasion of touch. 



§ 328. SUBSTANCE AND ATTRIBUTE : MIND AND MATTER. 529 

The third class of relations which belong to corporeal substance 
are its powers variously to affect, through the senses, the body as 
animated and ensouled, and also the soul itself as a sentient 
agent Every material substance has power to produce certain 
so-called impressions on the so-called organs of sensation, i. e., 
upon the body as organized to receive these impressions. Of 
these effects, the vibration of the tympanum, and the formation 
of the image on the retina, are examples. These may occur 
without sensation, as is manifest in cases of disease, of mental 
excitement, and the use of anaesthetic agents. But the condition 
of any of these effects, is a living body. Consequent upon these 
are those effects upon the sensitive or sentient soul which are 
called sensations, or sensations proper. The condition of the last 
is a body living and ensouled. In sensation, or the sense-element 
of the complex act called sense-perception, the soul is purely 
receptive, or passive, and the material substance is active. Its 
various powers to produce these sensations are all compre- 
hended under the category or relation of causation. 

On the condition of the experience of these sensations the be- 
ing which causes them is known to exist as a Non-ego. But the pos- 
sibility of being perceived is in itself no attribute of matter in 
the sense of being a causative power. To perceive is an act 
of the mind. The causative energy and the capacity which fits 
for this act, both pertain to the mind alone. Matter, so far as it 
is perceived, acts neither upon the body nor the soul. Matter is, 
i. e., exists, and is known by the mind to be. It is not correct to 
say, that it is known only as the cause of the sensations which the 
soul suffers or receives ; making it to be known only as the 
unknown cause of a felt effect. Rather, it is known to be and 
also as causing these sensations. As existing, it is known to have 
other relations than its power to cause sensations. Space is a 
reality, and so are the spatial relations of matter as known. To 
define matter with J. S. Mill (Logic, I.,c. 3, §7,) as "the ex- 
ternal cause to which we ascribe our sensations/' is to overlook 
entirely these relations of matter to space, and misinterpret the 
act of knowledge itself. To say that " matter may be defined as a 
permanent possibility 01 sensation" (Exam, of Ham., c. xi.),is to 
fall into a nk>re serious error. 

Besides the relations of material substances to space and to the 
23 



530 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§32fe 



animated and ensouled body, there is a class of relations which 
it holds to other bodies. These are its powers to product effects 
in or upon them. They comprehend all the properties of matter, 
whether mechanical, chemical, or organic, which have as yet 
been discovered, or which science may in future unfold. That 
all these attributes are comprehended under the causal relation is 
too obvious to need illustration or proof. 

The relations of matter thus far considered are those of space 
and causation. We define material substance by means of these 
as a being having a definite form or outline {involving relations to 
space or other bodies existing in space), occupying exclusively 
some portion of space {involving space-relations) ? and productive 
of specific sensations in the sentient soul on occasion of which it is 
known to be {involving relations of causation and objective reality). 

We repeat the remark, that this complex or collection of re- 
lations do not constitute a material substance. They simply in- 
dicate that it is a material substance. They are relations which 
define and distinguish it as such. They constitute its logical es- 
sence only. The same is true of the element being which is im- 
plied in such definition. Being, like every other simple notion, 
cannot be defined ; but it does not follow, as we have already 
seen, that it cannot be known and understood. 

§ 329. A material substance has been defined as 

Space occupa- . 

tion and iden- exclusively occupying a portion of space. It is not 

tity of matter. . , , , . . „ -,-,-, i n 

required that this portion of space should be oi any 
definite size or dimensions. A grain of sand is a material sub- 
stance; so is a large mass of sand-stone : so is a portion of water or 
the indefinitely expanded atmosphere. All that is required is, 
that the mass, be it greater or smaller, should be so fixed and held 
together in its parts as to occupy continuously their defined lim- 
its. The continuity of parts is of more importance than the 
continuity of definite outline. This continuity or coherence of 
parts is maintained in different substances by different agencies. 
The constituent parts may be held together by simple mechanical 
aggregation under the force of cohesive attraction. They may 
be held more closely by the polar force of crystalline arrange- 
ment. They may be united still more 'ultimately under the laws 
of chemical affinity. They may be combined and assimi lilted 
into the forms and products of organic existence ; or the sub- 



\ 



§330. SUBSTANCE AND ATTRIBUTE: MIND AND MATTER. 531 

stance may be conceived as an ultimate molecule, or a simple 
cell. Every being that is one and continuous, of whatever size, 
in whatever form, or held together by whatever bond of union, is 
a material substance. 

A certain continuity in time, or permaneuce,is either required 
as a defining characteristic of substance, or is implied in its defi- 
nition. This integrity of the whole is presumed as having 
continued and as likely to continue for some considerable period, 
or the being indicated would scarcely be called a substance. It 
certainly would not be worth noticing by defining attributes if it 
did not so remain. 

The relative permanence of material substance explains the 
conception of its identity. Identity in such a substance may 
pertain to the constituent elements only, or to the form only, or 
to the uniting force, or it may be applied to the connection of 
one part with another in a series of changes which involve a 
total alteration of both constituents and form. Thus if the same 
particles remain united in the same form by mechanical aggrega- 
tion, the substance is eminently the same ; the only diversity in 
such a case being that of relation to other substances — a 
diversity of time or place or both. Should the constituents re- 
main the same and the form be changed, it might be called the 
same, provided the constituents were viewed as more important 
than the form. If the external form is changed by growth or 
development, as in plants or animals, the continuously acting 
force is regarded as making them a substance. If the parts of 
a knife or a ship are displaced and replaced by successive re- 
movals and substitutions while the form and functions are re- 
tained, the substance is still called the same by a loose analogy 
taken from living agents and their gradual accretion and growth. 

§ 330. We have seen that a change in form and 

, , . , , , n The produc- 

structure or in both, involves the production of a new tion of new 
substance, because it involves the production of rela- 
tions which clearly distinguish such a substance. A living 
being, as an animal, consists in part of certain material particles 
or elements. If a succession of changes or decompositions and 
recompositions could go on before our eyes, so that we could 
trace the same particles back through every form in which they 
can possiblv exist, through plant, mineral, earth, air, water, etc 



532 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§331 



in every possible form of chemical and crystalline combination, 
till we had reached the ultimate molecules or elements of all 
and of each, we should evolve a series of substances, one after 
another, in a consecutive order of gradation. 

But the simplest elements, the ultimate particles, would still 
be substances with attributes which they must continue to re- 
tain and from which they could never in fact be parted. Those 
who seek an interior substance, divested of attributes — the nu- 
cleus of the outer — are misled by a secondary use of the word. 

The "underlying substance" of the schools, the 

The real Es- "thing in itself" of Kant, are mere names, which sig- 
Thing in itself . nify either being in the abstract or being in the con- 
crete. If it is being in the abstract, then it must be 
synonymous with matter as knowable, *. e., it is a concept only, 
which can be separated from its relations in thought but never in 
fact. If it is being in the concrete, then this must be known 
with its relations and never apart from them. In either case the 
substance or thing in itself, cannot be known by itself. 

§ 331. A material substance is not necessarily in- 
substancVnot dependent or self-subsistent. This was insisted on by 
dependent m ~ Spinoza, who defines substance to be " that which 
exists and is conceived by itself." " Per substantiam 
intelligo id quod in se est et per se concipitur ; hoc est id cujus con- 
ceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei a quo formari debeat." 
Ethica, p. i.,def. 3. From this definition the inference was direct 
and irresistible, that no finite substance is possible, because every 
so-called finite material substance is produced or sustained by 
other material beings, and is dependent on them ; or, on the other 
hand, there is but one such substance, and that is the total of all 
which exists — the universe ; this totality being conceived as abso- 
lute and independent. 

Locke falls into a similar manner of speaking when he de- 
scribes the constitution " which every thing has within itself 
without any relation to any thing without." Similar to this is 
the doctrine of Whewell, that substance is indestructible. " The 
supposition of the existence of substance is so far from beiDg 
uncertain, that it carries with it irresistible conviction, and sub- 
stance is necessarily conceived as something which cannot be 
produced or destroyed." Hist, of Scient. Ideas, vol. ii.,p. 32. 



§ 331. SUBSTANCE AND ATTRIBUTE : MIND AND MATTER. 533 

Our analysis has shown that a material substance is so far 
from being independent of other beings and forces, that, pro* 
perly speaking, no material substance is in any sense inde- 
pendent, or can be conceived to be so. Every material sub- 
stance is what it is by the productive or sustaining force of all 
other beings and forces in the universe. It is also conceived and 
defined to be what it is by its relations to these forces, the ex- 
pressed and the implied. It cannot exist and cannot be defined 
except by these relations to other beings and agencies. If ma- 
terial substance is dependent, it is not necessarily indestructible. 
Should the forces which sustain it be withdrawn, or their action 
be changed, it would cease to be, or cease to be the same sub- 
stance that it was. 

And yet we constantly assume that material substances are 
permanent, — not the ultimate particles alone, but even the continu- 
ous forms in which they exist and perpetually reappear. If we 
did not assume this, we should not define the constituents of 
either, — we should neither form them into concepts, nor apply 
these concepts for the ends of knowledge. What is the nature 
and what are the grounds of this assumption ? They are none 
other than that the agencies and laws which sustain and produce 
these substances will remain, in order to accomplish certain 
ends for which they exist. In other words, it is only by re- 
lations of orderly design that we can explain or vindicate that 
belief in the permanence of the material structure as to its fcrrus 
of being and their constituents which is received as an axiom in 
all physical or inductive philosophy. That this permanence or 
indestructibility is not essential or necessary, that it cannot be 
viewed as an axiomatic truth, appears from the broader and 
deeper axioms on which it rests. These axioms involve the rela- 
tion of design and belief in a designer. 

There are philosophers who deny that there are any 
permanent forms or elements of material substance. seem c to deny 
Such believe that nothing is fixed, either in sub- permanence ' 
stance or attributes ; that every thing in the universe is in a per- 
petual flux, that the law of development controls all existence, 
so that one form and species of being is evolved from another — ■ 
the more complex from the more simple — in endless progression. 
One relation of permanence in nature must, however, be as- 



534 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



332. 



sumed by all these philosophers, and that is, the permanence of this 
law or principle of development itself If it may be assumed from 
the limited facts and observations adduced, that the law of de- 
velopment has prevailed in all the ages, and has evolved one form 
of being after another, by a steady progress and in regular 
order, then the permanence of the law of development itself 
must be referred to a fixed purpose and design of nature. The 
law of development cannot, therefore, drive the fact of design 
out of the universe, nor dispense with the assumption of design 
as one of the axioms of science. 
m , . . , § 332. Our analysis of matter and spirit has shown 

The reciprocal ~ ., 

relations of that many of the attributes of both can only be ex- 

niaterial and " ^ 

spiritual sub- plained and understood by means of one another. 
The one can be defined and known only by the 
other. To understand and describe the one we must make use 
of the other. But the two are in some important respects very 
unlike. In order to show this with success, we must first con- 
sider the difference between the direct and reflex knowledge of 
both. 
„. , . . The mind knows both matter and mind by direct 

Mind and mat- J 

ter directly an( j re flex knowledge. By direct knowledge in 

and indirectly ° •> ° 

known. sense-perception, it knows matter as a being. By 

direct knowledge in consciousness, it knows itself as the agent 
which knows matter and is also the subject of certain sensations. 
It knows both these objects in certain relations. It knows mat- 
ter not only to exist, but to be diverse from itself the knower, 
and to be extended, i. e., to have space relations ; it knows itself 
to exist, and enduringly to feel and act, i. e., to have time rela- 
tions. 

By indirect or reflex knowledge the soul is considered as sen- 
tient as well as percipient. As sentient it receives or suffers certain 
effects, viz. : the sensations of which matter is the cause. As perci- 
pient it knows by consciousness its own subjective states as thus 
caused, and by sense-perception the being that causes them ; also 
that this being is not itself, and is extended in space. The being 
having these capacities to cause these effects in itself as a sen- 
tient it defines as matter. 

In other words, in sense-perception, the intellect knows some- 
thing more than subjective or spiritual effects, viz., specific sens^ 



§ 333. SUBSTANCE AND ATTRIBUTE: MIND AND MATTER. 535 

tions, as of touch, sight, etc., for which it assumes an unknown 
cause. It irot only knows itself directly and those acts and 
objects that are purely spiritual, but it knows material objects 
also, and by its prerogative as an agent competent to know. 
If it did not know them directly as beings, it could not know 
them as extended or as diverse from itself, or even as causal 
agents. 

We say, then, without reserve, that the mind in sense-percep- 
tion, knows matter or material being as truly and as directly as in 
consciousness it knows the ego, or mental being. 

§ 333. The qualities of matter have been divided 
into the primary and the secondary. The primary f matter 1 * 1 !! 
include its relations to space, as extension and space- secondary. and 
occupancy, or impenetrability. The secondary include 
its causative relations to the sentient soul, as hardness, color, 
smell, taste, etc. [Dugald Stewart divides these relations into 
Mathematical affections and Primary and Secondary qualities. Ham- 
ilton recognizes three classes, the Primary, the Secondary, and the 
Secundo-primary : the primary including the relations of exten- 
sion ; the secundo-primary, resistance, gravity, repulsion, and iner- 
tia ; and the secondary, the capacities to cause sensations.] 

The principle of this two-fold division is obviously just and the 
application of it is easy. The analysis already made has shown 
that these two classes of attributes are clearly distinguished in 
fact. The relations of matter to space do not in their logical con- 
tent, as distinguished by the mind, involve the recognition of any 
sensation. On the other hand, the powers of matter to produce 
certain sensations of touch, sight, smell, taste, and sound, can 
only be known by considering the sensations themselves as caused 
by these powers. Of the first class we have direct and positive 
knowledge. Of the second our knowledge is indirect and rela- 
tive, it being explained by the effects produced. 

There is still another element in matter which does not fall 
within either class, and this is matter as existing in distinction 
from its relations to other matter, to the sentient spirit, or to 
space or time. This is known by direct mental apprehension, 
in connection with felt sensations and on condition of the excited 
or impelled sensorium. Matter is known as being and also as 
causing these sensations: not as though its being were only known 



536 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 335. 

by relation to these sensations ; but it is directly known as being 
and also as related to these sensations which it causes. Every 
thing which is known as related, is known to be ; consequently, 
the matter which is known as related to the sensations must also 
be known to exist. 

Two questions remain to be considered in respect to these 
two classes of qualities, (a.) Are the primary qualities distin- 
guished from the secondary in being alone essential to the con- 
ception of matter, as Locke and others assert ? (6.) Do the pri- 
mary qualities alone give us a knowledge of matter as it really is 
and as distinguished from a relative knowledge ? 

§ 334. (a) Are the primary qualities alone essential to matter ? 
The primary qualities are essential to the conception of matter, 
so far as they are required and sufficient to define and distinguish 
this kind of being from every other. It is of course implied that 
such relations are always true of this kind of existence — that 
they are always present and never absent in a single individual. 
This being assumed, we have only to ask for a sufficient number 
of relations to serve the purposes of definition. It is obvious 
that for this purpose no other relations of matter are necessary 
than its relations to space. These are always present, and for 
the purposes of defining the concept, matter, these only are 
required. 

It is contended that they are essential, and therefore primary, 
in another sense, viz., in being adequate as they exist in different 
forms and varieties to account for all the secondary qualities, so 
that color, taste, heat, electricity can all be resolved into the num- 
ber, position, and motion of homogeneous molecules. It is obvious 
however that this is not a logical, or psychological, or even a 
metaphysical problem, but one that is purely physical — a problem 
which can be solved by extensive observations of every species 
of matter and a more penetrating insight into its powers and laws 
than has yet been reached. Its solution must be left with the 
physicists, to whom it properly belongs. 

§ 335. The second question, (b) involves the more 
nom«nai d ph or comprehensive inquiry, Is our knowledge of either 
iedge. ve kD0W " matter or spirit real, or only phenomenal f 

The real, in the language of recent philosophy, is 
opposed both to the phenomenal and the relatwe. It is used 



§335. substance and attribute : mind and matter. 537 

iii the first connection by Kant, and in the second by Hamil- 
ton. 

We have seen that the knowledge of the primary qualities 
of matter is more direct than that of the secondary qualities, 
because to the apprehension of the latter the reflexive con- 
sideration of the soul as sentient and percipient is required. But 
the knowledge of the relations of matter, — as indeed of the mind, — 
in one sense of the term, must necessarily be a relative knowledge, 
whether the relations are primary or secondary. 

But besides this knowledge of the mutual relations of matter 
and spirit, we have also a knowledge of both directly as beings — ■ 
of matter by perception and of spirit by consciousness. Is this 
direct knowledge real knowledge ? This question is important, 
and has been so much discussed in modern speculation as to re- 
quire special consideration. 

The phenomenal, as contrasted with the real, may be under- 
stood in two senses. It may mean that that which appears to one 
sense is not what it appears to be to another; as when a stick, 
thrust in the water, appears to be bent, but is not so in fact ; or, 
when the rainbow appears to be, but is not, a solid arch. In 
cases like these, the inference is drawn that one percept, as that 
given to the eye, is the sign of another, that which is appropriate 
to the touch. We infer that - what we see with the eye is. or 
will prove solid, or, as we say, real, to the touch. In this se^e, 
that which is known by the sense of touch, is held to be rial, 
while what is apparent to or inferred from vision or any other 
sense is phenomenal. 

The phenomenal, in the second seme, is anything manifested to 
direct observation — either of sense or consciousness — as distin- 
guished from the elements into which it is resolved, and the powers 
or laws by which it is explained. For example, the rainbow, as 
apprehended by the eye, is a phenomenon ; but the light reflected 
from rain-drops at a certain angle from the sun, is said to be the 
reality. The rain-drop, again, as a phenomenon, is a portion of 
water definite in form, relations to the light, and appearance 
to the eye. Water, again, when chemically analyzed, is the pro- 
duct of certain agents in certain proportions, etc. etc. The reality 
of light is an ether capable of certain undulations. 

According to this use of these contrasted terms, every thing 

23* 



538 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §335. 

apprehended by the senses, all that is known as most solid and 
real in the world of matter, is only phenomenal. That only is real 
which is discovered by scie7ice of the elements and laws into which 
these phenomena are resolved, and by which they are explained. 
Any thing which remains to be thus explained and resolved, is 
phenomenal, relatively to the agents and laws which explain it. 

Under this contrast, that which is directly and constantly 
known, which interests our feelings, which is most important, 
and, in one sense, is most permanent, is pronounced unreal ; and 
that only is called real which is reached by special and artificial 
analysis, and is expressed by recondite relations. Of the analysis 
which attains to reality so understood, we are never certain that 
we have reached the end. The real agents behind these shifting 
changes which we call the phenomenal universe of material 
being, may not yet have been ascertained; and after all that 
science has discovered, we are still forced to ask, What is reality, 
and shall we ever be able to lay hold of it? The phenomena of 
the mind, again, are what appears to consciousness, as contrasted 
with the powers and relations into which they may be resolved 
and by means of which they may perhaps be explained. The 
states and operations of the mind, the products themselves, nay, 
even the ego itself, of all of which we have direct knowledge in 
consciousness — all these are phenomena. 

According to Kant and Hamilton, reality, or the thing in itself, 
can never be known. It is transcendental to our knowledge ; we 
only know that it is. We cannot even know the truth of its rela- 
tions ; for the relations or categories by w T hich the understanding 
judges, do not connect realities, but only phenomena. Even the 
relations of space and time do not apply to realities, but only to 
phenomena. And even if both the forms of the understanding and 
of intuition could be applied to things as well as to phenomena, 
these forms may themselves be only subjective: that is, the phe- 
nomenal products of the human agent have an existence relative 
only to the constitution of the human being. (Cf. §§ 256, 7.) 

The real as thus opposed to the phenomenal is called by Kant 
the noumenon or the thing in itself. This cannot be discerned 
by the senses, nor can it be apprehended by consciousness. It 
ever flits from our grasp, and leaves phenomena only in our 
possession as shadows which never satisfy, but simply point to 



§ 335. SUBSTANCE AND ATTRIBUTE I MIND AND MATTER. 539 

something which we never can reach. This real we cannot know 
by the intellect. It is true, the Reason, as distinguished from 
the Understanding, must assume it to exist, in order to regu- 
late its operations and conclusions, but even the Speculative 
Reason does not know that it in fact exists. It is only the 
Practical or Moral Reason which commands us to believe that it 
exists in the three forms of Matter, the Soul, and God. This 
knowledge is called relative, because it is dependent on the con- 
stitution of the soul, and the ultimate relations by which we con- 
nect the objects which we know. If these were changed, all 
our present knowledge would be changed with them. It is 
therefore relative to these powers and dependent on the rela- 
tions according to which they connect objects in knowing. 

In the language of Hamilton: "Our whole knowledge of 
mind and of matter is relative — conditioned — relatively condi- 
tioned. Of things absolutely or in themselves — be they external, 
or be they internal — we know nothing or know them as incogniza- 
ble ; and become aware of their incomprehensible existence only as 
this is indirectly and accidentally revealed to us through certain 
qualities related to our faculties of knowledge, and which quali- 
ties, again, we cannot think as unconditioned, irrelative, existent 
in and of themselves. All that we know is therefore phenomenal 
— phenomenal of the unknown. 

"Our knowledge is relative: 1st, because existence is not 
cognizable absolutely and in itself, but only in special modes ; 
2d, because these modes can be known only if they stand in a 
certain relation to our faculties ; and 3d, because the modes, thus 
relative to our faculties, are presented to and known by the mind 
only under modifications determined by the faculties themselves." 
Met, Lee. 8. 

To secure ourselves against this distrust of our capacity to 
know the real, we have endeavored to distinguish between ob- 
jects as perceived by sense and consciousness, and as known in 
higher relations. Things and facts given in experience are, as 
phenomena, j ust what they appear to be. But when we view them 
in their relations to causes and laws, we call those real whose causes 
are permanent and always active. These are constant, ever-pres- 
ent, and enduring effects. If the causes are occasional and short- 
lived, their effects are said to be unreal. The universal licrht and 



540 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 335. 

the wakeful eye co-operate to produce and prepare for the per- 
ceiving mind the reality which we call the visible universe. Let 
this light be dimmed, or the eye be dimmed (one or both), and 
the colored universe is an actual reality no longer. But inasmuch 
as its conditions or causes are ever ready to produce this phenom- 
enal being, it is said to be real or a reality. It is only as we 
assure ourselves that these conditions are permanent, because they 
are sustained by the agencies and the designs of the living God, 
that we find the profoundest import as well as the sufficient 
ground of reality. 

But when we hear Kant and Hamilton inquire, May not the 
intellect which perceives, also create the objects which it beholds, 
with a similar liability to change as the sensorium i. e., Is not 
existence with its categories, itself a phenomenon dependent 
upon changeable forces, and therefore relative to the powers and 
forms of the intellect ? We answer, No. Every analogy fails by 
which we interpret the realities of the knowing by the phenomena 
of the sentient soul. The soul, as intellect, not only acts in know- 
ing according to the constitution which makes it what it is, 
but it assumes, and must assume, that its intuitive relations are 
discerned and affirmed by every intellect whether creating or cre- 
ated, and are therefore the real elements of all trustworthy 
knowing as a subjective process, and of all valid knowledge as an 
objective fact. To whatever object-matter this process and its 
results are applied (whether it be to material or spiritual, or to 
the thinking agent itself), these categories are absolute and real, 
and cannot be even supposed to be relative or phenomenal. To 
suppose them such, is to commit intellectual suicide. It is to in- 
troduce constant antagonism into every process which we perform, 
and the elements of self-destruction into every result which these 
processes evolve, as well as logical incompatibility and confusion 
into the language by which both processes and results are ex- 
pressed. It is to philosophize ourselves into the impossibility of 
philosophy, and by assumptions which we argue that we may 
neither assume nor confide in. It is not only to offend against 
reason by introducing inconsistency into that which in its very 
nature is self-consistent, but it is to overlook or deny those designs 
which we must assume that the universe exists to fulfill,so far at 
least as it is capable of being known. 



§ 336. FINITE AND CONDITIONED — INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE. 541 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FINITE AND CONDITIONED. — THE INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE 

The questions concerning the finite and its relations, the con- 
ditioned and its dependence upon the absolute, are the most 
vexed and the most unsettled of any in modern speculation. Can 
the infinite be conceived or known by a finite intellect ? Can 
the unconditioned be brought under those relations which are 
appropriate only to the conditioned ? These questions we must 
attempt to answer, if we would analyze all the powers and explain 
all the products of the human intellect. We can do this more 
successfully if we consider the finite and the conditioned apart 
from the infinite and the absolute. "We begin with 

I. The finite and the conditioned. 

§ 336. The process of knowledge in all the forms 

• ii- 'o • -it o 7. • To know a 

as yet considered, is a unifying and therefore a limi- limiting pro- 
ting process. Each object which it takes in hand it 
analyzes into many parts, and discriminates into various elements. 
The parts it then proceeds to recombine into a completed whole : 
the elements it blends into a perfected product. It leaves it a 
completed whole or finished result, which passes into the sum of 
its possessions as a known, a defined, and therefore a limited or 
finite object. 

Thus, in sense-perception, the objects are perceived by being 
first separated into distinct percepts, each of which is perfected 
by a separate act of analytic attention, and which are again united 
into a completed whole in space. 

The units thus constituted may be enlarged by the imagina- 
tion and memory. Spatial objects may be added one to another, so 
as to increase the space-unit to the farthest limit ; or the imagina- 
tion may suppose them created where they are not. Memory 
may add to the present mental states all that have gone before 
within its own experience. Imagination supplies all that now 
exist or that might exist in other minds. Each of these forms of 
the representative power, after its own manner, produces units 01 
finite wholes. 



542 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. § 337. 

Thought, by its similarities observed, unites the like into new 
combinations or units. It refers diverse effects to a common 
cause, acting under similar laws. It subordinates means the 
most diverse to a single end, by their conspiring and designed 
adaptation, and thus unites them as preeminently one. 

§ 337. We can imagine that all material objects 

The finite unir 1 . , , . , , . 

verse, how perceivable could be united as one by a single 
mind endowed with capacities ample enough to grasp 
so many by a single act. We can also imagine every existing mind 
as co-operating with every other mind, and can suppose each to know 
all the powers of these minds, and all their acts. We can be- 
lieve it possible that these agents and objects should be known in 
all their knowable likenesses and dissimilarities, in all their 
causal agencies, in all the laws under which their forces act and 
the ends to which they are adapted. We can conceive this as- 
semblage of separate objects, material and spiritual, with their 
several phenomena, to be but an assemblage of effects, produced 
by other agencies and other beings in previous times, and these 
by others ; each aggregate of beings and forces producing others, 
under permanent agencies and fixed laws. Moreover, we can 
conceive these beings, with their powers and laws, as co-existing 
in space ; these successive evolutions, whether of separate beings 
or new phenomena, as developed in time, as designed for separate 
ends, and all these ends as conspiring together for a series of 
ends, constituting in this way an intelligible and orderly system. 
This assemblage of all objects believed to be existing in space 
and acting in time, with all the agencies and laws and relations 
now known or which may be afterward discovered, make up the 
finite universe as knowable, or as conceived by man. It is called 
the universe, because it includes as a whole all the separable 
objects apprehensible by sense and consciousness. It is thermite 
universe, because each of these objects is limited to a portion of 
space and period of time, and subjected to all the conditions 
of existence and of action which their actual forces, laws, and 
ends prescribe. It exists and acts under the action of these 
forces, ends, and laws. 

The finite universe is limited and conditioned. It is limited 
because it is made up of objects and events which are bounded 
by one another, and have a limited or definite extension. The 






§338. FINITE AND CONDITIONED — INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE. 543 

existing spirits which we know, exist and act within certain de- 
fined spheres of extension. When all these extended beings, and 
these spheres of spiritual being and action, are gathered into the 
universe known, its extension is still limited or defined. So far, 
also, as we trace this universe of beings and phenomena back- 
wards or forwards through the series of its changing developments, 
its duration is limited by a beginning and end. There is a first 
and a last of the series, if it is limited; whether the terms de- 
signate a single object or a single act, or collectively designate 
many objects and acts, 

It is also a conditioned universe. Every part and element in 
it depends on something other than itself, for what it is and for 
what it does. It begins to be by the operation of one or more 
agents acting according to laws, and these agents are the neces- 
sary conditions of its existence. It also continues to exist under 
the operation of conditions. These conditions are the causes, 
laws, and ends of its being, and these prescribe its being, as well 
as the sphere and the results of its activity. Each part of the 
universe being thus dependent on productive forces other than 
itself, the universe itself, as a whole, is said to be conditioned as 
well as limited. But is this all that we know ? Is this all that 
exists? Besides the limited, is there the unlimited? Besides 
the conditioned and dependent, is there the unconditioned, the 
self-existent, and self-active ? These questions introduce 

II. The infinite and absolute, and their relations to the finite and 
dependent. 

§ 338. To understand the import of the questions The . rt of 
concerning these much-vexed topics, and to attempt th . Q tern ? s * nfl - 

° L L nite and abso- 

to answer them, it is necessary, first of all, to clear lute - 
away all uncertainty in respect to the terms which are employed, 
and to bring the mind to a definite apprehension of the various 
Benses in which they may be interchanged and confounded. We 
consider, first of all, the etymology of the more important of 
these terms. 

We begin with the infinite. 

Infinite signifies, literally, that which is not bounded or ter- 
minated. It is primarily applied to spatial quantity. Every 
thing which has extent is terminated or bounded by some other 
object or objects which are also extended. The line or surface 



M4 THE HUMAN INTELLECT. §339. 

which divides one surface or solid from another, is called its 
Unit, and the surface or solid, as necessarily thus terminated 01 
terminable, is called finite or limited. In like manner, the ma- 
thematical point is conceived as terminating or limiting the mathw 
matical line, and the line itself is limited or finite. By an obvious 
transference of signification from the objects of space to those of 
time, the first and last of any succession of events or series of 
numbers is called its limit, and every series of numbers, numbered 
objects, or events and portions of time, is finite or limited. 

The terms originally appropriate to extension, duration, and 
number, are still further applied to the exercise of power by 
material and spiritual agents. The exercise of power by man, 
whether spiritual or material, is possible only in certain places, 
at certain times, and with respect to a certain number of objects, 
or a measured quantity or mass of matter, and thus power itself 
becomes measurable by the relations of quantity and number as 
applied to its effects and the means by which they are caused. 
Man can only accomplish certain effects in limited places, times, 
and number, and hence he is said to be limited in his powers. 
He can only know and do certain things under all these favoring 
circumstances, and is therefore a finite being. The word finite 
is, therefore, originally a term of quantity, and secondarily of 
causal or productive agency. The infinite, in the general sense is 
the not-finite. Logically conceivable, there are as many sorts of 
the not-finite or infinite as there are senses of the finite. 

§ 339. The unconditioned comes next in order. 
tioned^uTthe Logically, it is the negative of the conditioned, and 
non-condition- followg its mea ning. The conditioned is that which is 
in any sense dependent upon any thing else, either as a 
material of its composition, a cause or means of its production, or an 
object of its psychical activity. Thus, silver is a condition of a silver 
spoon ; heat is the condition of the melting of iron ; and a material 
world the condition of the act of sense-perception. Every condition 
has this in common with every other, viz., that that to which it is 
the condition cannot be what it is without it, whether it is a 
thing, an act or an effect. It is therefore said to be limited by 
these conditions. It can neither be, nor be thought of without 
them. They are necessary to it. They must be given or present 
with it, and are therefore called its conditions. 



§340. FINITE AND CONDITIONED — INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE. 545 

The primary signification of the conditioned is that of necessary 
dependence. Its secondary application is to objects of quantity, 
thus reversing the process through which the finite passes. The 
finite proceeds from a signification of quantity to one of quality. 
The conditioned proceeds from quality to quantity. 
The line and surface are the conditions as well as the quality and 
limits respectively of the surface and the solid, but 
.solely because they are essentially necessary to the conception of 
each. In the same manner, space and time are the conditions of 
extension and duration, because they are essential to the possibil- 
ity of each. These can neither be logically thought of, nor really 
exist, except as they involve space and time as their conditions. 
All the limits of objects of quantity are also their conditions, but 
all the conditions of such objects are not necessarily their limits. 

The unconditioned is that which is not conditioned — i. e., not 
necessarily dependent on another object for thought, being, or act, 
as a constituent, cause, or object. Whenever the positive, the 
conditioned, can be applied, the negative unconditioned, can be 
logically conceived as its opposite. 

§ 340. The absolute is still another term that is 

/». t n . . n . ,, ,. The absolute, 

often interchanged with the infinite and the uncondi- several senses 
tioned. Originally and etymological] y, it signifies 
freed from, or severed. This signification is purely negative with 
reference to that from which the subject is freed. It was also 
applied to mean the finished or completed, even as the Latin word 
absolutus, as is thought, was originally used of the web when 
ready to be taken from the loom. Both these senses have passed 
into the modern use of the term, and determined the varieties of 
its application. First of all, absolute and absolutely is applied 
to any thought or thing as viewed apart from any of its rela- 
tions^ — regarded simply by itself. This meaning is near akin to 
that of an object viewed as complete within or by itself. Next;, 
it is applied to that which is complete of itself so far as the 
relations of dependence are concerned ; to that which is necessa- 
rily dependent on nothing besides itself. In this sense it is very 
near in meaning to the primary sense of the unconditioned al- 
ready explained. Still further it is used in the sense of severed 
or separated from all relations whatever, or not reCated — i. e., not 
admitting of any relations. This sense Hamilton and Mansel 



546 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§341. 



have transferred also to the unconditioned and the infinite. 
Still again: it is applied to relations of quantity, and here the 
signification of complete or finished is applied to the greatest 
possible or conceivable whole, to the total of all existence, whether 
limited or unlimited in extent and duration. 

In the Hegelian terminology, the absolute takes a special signifi- 
"ense ge cation from the fundamental assumptions of the Hegelian system. 

When the notion, der Begriff, has completed every possible form of 
development, and, as it were, done its utmost possible by the force of the move- 
ment essential to itself, the absolute is reached. This absolute completes every 
possible form of development, and explains every kind of object conceivable 
and knowable by the mind, from the undetermined notion with which it begins, up 
to the highest form of development, when it becomes self-conscious in the human 
spirit by distinguishing itself from the material universe. The conscious spirit 
thus evolved, and reflecting in itself all these lower forms of existence, is essential 
to and completes the development of the absolute. This absolute is perpetually 
reproduced by the lower forces of the universe, arjd itself perpetually represents 
all these in its own reflective thinking. 

It is obvious from what has been said, that these three terms 
are all used in applications which are often interchanged, but 
which should be carefully and sharply distinguished. The 
infinite, the unconditioned, the absolute, may denote some 
property or relation of a being, in the abstract, or may stand for a 
being or entity which is believed or supposed to be infinite, un- 
conditioned, or absolute. That is, the infinite, etc., may stand 
for the infinitude, the unconditionedness, the absoluteness of some 
being — i. e., as an abstraction or property of a being ; or for that 
which is infinite, unconditioned, or absolute. One of these ac- 
ceptations is obviously very different from the other. The one 
may readily be confounded with the other. 

§ 341. These concepts and the entities which they 

What is not true ° . . 

of the absolute, represent are not of necessity merely negative con- 
ceptions, nor are they the products of what is called 
negative thinking. 

We have seen from our analysis of the terms infinite, uncondi- 
tioned, and absolute, that they are all originally negative in form, 
and that this form, strictly interpreted, would denote the absence 
or the denial of the positive attributes, with which these nega- 
tives are combined. From this unquestioned fact the inference 
has been derived that, because the terms were negative, the con- 
cepts are also negative. 



§341. FINITE AND CONDITIONED — INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE. 547 

But this inference, by whomsoever it is countenanced or made, 
is manifestly invalid. It does not follow, because a concept ii 
designated by a negative term, that it is not positively conceived ; 
or, because an object is called by such a name, that it is not 
really known. If the only fact that is prominent before the 
mind be that an object is not something else — whether it be a 
being or a quality — it may be designated by a negative term. 
This term does not deny its real existence, or that it is both 
knowable and known, for it may assume and imply both. It 
simply sets forth its contrast with something else. If we see a 
bat, and say of it, It is not a bird, or, It is not a beast, or if the 
Sandwich Islanders, for lack of name, had called the ox a not-dog, 
the use of a negative appellation would not necessarily authorize 
us to infer the absence of definite conceptions or of positive know- 
ledge. So, when we gather together the entire sphere of finite 
being, and stretching our thought beyond, apprehend something 
which is unlike it and contrasted with it by being not finite, not 
conditioned, and not dependent, we do not confess that we cannot 
conceive it or that we do not know it as something positive and 
real because we emphasize this single relation of contrast by the 
use of such negative terms as the infinite, the unconditioned, and 
the absolute. 

Again, these concepts are not " negative " in that they are pro- 
duced by what is called "negative thinking.^ This negative 
thinking is distinguished from the mere thinking of a negative — 
i. e., thinking a positive in a negative relation — as above ex- 
plained. Those who teach this, assert that our conceptions of the 
unconditioned, etc., are necessarily negative, because they are the 
result of an attempt to think them which is unsuccessful, and 
which, whenever it is repeated, reminds us of the impotence or 
imbecility of our faculties. 

" Every thing conceivable in thought lies between two extremes, which, as con- 
tradictory of each other, cannot both be true, but of which, as mutual contradic 
tions, one must." " Space cannot be conceived by us either as an infinite or a 
finite maximum, or an infinite or finite minimum, and yet if it is conceived at all 
it must be conceived as one of these, and forasmuch as we cannot conceive it 
under either, we have only a negative idea of space, i. e., an idea which results 
from an impotent attempt to conceive it. The same is true of time, and even of 
causation itself." — Hamilton, Met., Lee. 38. Mansel illustrates the process of ne- 
gative thinking still more definitely. " A negative concept, on the other handj 



548 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§341. 



which is no concept at all, is the attempt to realize in thought those combinationa 
of attributes of which no corresponding intuition is possible." " The only nega- 
tive ideas with which the logician or metaphysician as such is concerned, are 
those which arise from an attempt to transcend the conditions of all human 
thought." * * " Such negative notions, however, must not be confounded with 
the absence of all mental activity. They imply at once an attempt to think and 
a failure in that attempt." — Mansel, Proleg. Logica, chap. i. 

Again: The unconditioned, etc. is not necessarily, as a concept 
or as a being, exclusive of all relations. It is not unrelated, or 
the unrelated. 

The doctrine of Spinoza was contrary to this. The maxim on which he 
rested for the statement and defence of it was Omnis determinatio est negatio. 
Every relation implies a distinction into parts related; the one part cannot be the 
other : hence, the absolute, as related, cannot be complete or perfect of itself. It 
cannot be un conditioned ', for, in order to be related, it must require, or, so far as 
related must be conditioned upon, that which is related to and is not itself. 
It cannot be unlimited, for, in order to be what it is, or what it is asserted to be 
in the given relation, it must depend on something out of itself. The uncondi- 
tioned cannot, therefore, be related. Hamilton gives the following reasons for 
the same opinion : " A relation is always a particidar point of view ; consequently, 
the things thought as relative and correlative are always thought restrictively , in 
so far as the thought of the one discriminates and excludes the other and l'ke- 
wise all things not conceived in the same special or relative point of view." And 
again : "We conceive God as in the relation of Creator ,• and in so far &( we 
merely conceive him as Creator, we do not conceive him as unconditioned, as infi- 
nite," etc. {Letter to Galderwood; cf. Mansel, Limits of Bel. Thought, Lee. 2.) 

The proper answer to these representations is the following : 
It is not at all essential to the conception of the absolute wh vch 
the human mind requires, or to its reality, that it should exch ide 
all relations, but only a certain class of relations, viz., those of 
dependent being or origination. The truly absolute and infinite is 
not the unrelated as such, but that which is not dependent on any 
other being for its existence or its activity. 

Again : The unconditioned, etc., is not the sum of all actual 
or conceivable being. 

This view of the absolute is closely connected with the pre- 
ceding. The denial of all relations to the absolute involves the 
denial of all parts or entities, whether real or thought-parts, 
which can be related, and this requires the conception of the ab- 
solute, as the total of all existences and conceivable things, the 
To iv xai Ilav, the all which is also one. This position was actually 
taken by Spinoza, who was driven by logical consistency to ac- 
knowledge but one being or substance in the universe. 



§341. FINITE AND CONDITIONED — INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE. 549 

Hamilton {Letter to Calderwood) reasons as though this were the only possible 
conception of the true absolute. Mansel, {Limits of lief. Thought, Lee. 2,) ex- 
pressly asserts : " That which is conceived as absolute and infinite must be con- 
ceived as containing within itself the sum not only of all actual, but of all possi- 
ble modes of being. For, if any actual mode can be denied of it, it is related tt 
that mode, and limited by it." "The metaphysical representation of the Deity, 
as absolute and infinite, must necessarily, as the profoundest metaphysicians have 
acknowledged, amount to nothing else than the sum of all reality." 

Of this view of the absolute, we need only say, that it is not 
the only possible conception, nor is it the most rational concep- 
tion which can be taken of it. In a gross quantitative sense, we 
may say that the finite, plus the so-called infinite, equals the 
absolute, and that the result is in conception and in fact the un- 
conditioned and the infinite, because nothing can be affirmed of 
it in the way of distinction or relation. But the question at once 
returns, Is this the absolute and the unconditioned which the 
mind necessarily receives in thought and believes in fact ? This 
absolute cannot be totality, for it is expressly supplied by the 
mind in addition to the finite, and in order to account for and 
explain this. It cannot include that or require that which it itself 
accounts for and explains. 

Again : The absolute, again, is not a concept or entity which 
is divested of all interior relations- — a something entirely one 
and simple. 

Those who contend that the absolute does not admit the idea 
of parts, because parts imply division and relationship, are 
driven by a logical necessity to the conclusion that it must be one 
and indivisible in respect of parts and relations. Hence it has been 
inferred that the absolute cannot be a personal being. ' A person 
distinguishes himself from that which is not himself, his own 
being from his acts, and both from their objects, whether these be 
real or spiritual. His acts must be successive to one another also, 
and thus be separable and distinguishable in time. All these divi- 
sible parts aud distinguishable relations are,' it is urged, ' entirely 
incompatible with the concept and reality of the absolute/ 

These views are held by those who deny the possibility of 
personality in God, as well as by those who, like Kant, Mansel, 
and Hamilton, believe that God is personal, but deny that, s« 
far as He is believed to be personal, He can be known as the 
A bsolute. 



550 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§342. 



It is enough to say of this view of the absolute, as has been 
said already, that the absolute does not necessarily exclude the 
possibility of parts or relations. The absence of necessary de- 
pendence upon the finite and the complete dependence of the 
infinite upon itself, does not imply such a simplicity or oneness 
of being, as excludes complexness or personality. 

The absolute ^ 342 ' ^ taS ^^ earDestl 7 neld tnat the absolute 

en, are know- or the infinite is unknowable by a finite mind. 

Some have held that the mind cannot properly 
know either, that it is, or what it is; others that we can know 
that it is, but not what it is. 

views of Kant, Kant, Hamilton, and Mansel all hold that we 
jSan Q sei t . on ' aQd cann °t know, though we may believe that the infinite 

exists, simply because the conception of the infinite 
is not within the grasp of the finite. Kant teaches that the 
reason why we cannot know the infinite, is, that our faculties of 
knowing both the finite and the infinite have merely a subjective 
necessity and validity, and therefore we cannot trust their re- 
sults as objectively true. Moreover, if we apply them to the in- 
finite, we are involved in perpetual antinomies or contradictions. 
Our only apprehension of the absolute is, therefore, by the 
practical reason, and comes in the way of a moral necessity 
through the categorical imperative, which requires us to receive 
certain verities as true. Jacobi, Schleiermacher, and others say, 
that we reach these by faith or feeling, and not by knowledge. 
Hamilton asserts that we find ourselves impotent to know them, 
in consequence of the contradictions which the attempt involves. 
But he expressly asserts " that the sphere of our belief is much 
more extensive than the sphere of our knowledge ; and there- 
fore, when I deny that the infinite can by us be known, I am far 
from denying that by us it is, must, and ought to be believed. 
This I have indeed anxiously evinced, both by reasoning and au- 
thority." (Letter to Calderwood.) 

Herbert Spencer reasons against Hamilton and 
cer dissents in Mansel, to the conclusion that we can know that the 
Infinite exists, but we cannot know what it is. He 
contends that we can know that it is, because, " To say that we 
cannot know the Absolute is, by implication, to affirm that there 
is an Absolute. In the very denial of our power to know what 



§ 342. FINITE AND CONDITIONED — INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE. 551 

the Absolute is, there lies hidden the assumption that it is, eta 
Besides that definite consciousness of which logic formulates the 
laws, there is also an indefinite consciousness which cannot be 
formulated." — First Principles, P. I., c. iv., § 26. 

We contend that the absolute is knowable — that man 
can both know that it is and what it is. But, first of all, we 
would define the sense in which it cannot be known, either as thai 
or what. 

(a.) It cannot be known by the imagination, either as repre- 
sentative or creative. The imagination can only picture that 
which is limited by space and time, and which is possessed of 
limited powers of matter or spirit. The absolute and infinite 
has none of the attributes of matter or spirit, as limited by 
space and time. It cannot, therefore, be either imaged or 
pictured. 

It would be more exact to say that the analogies between 
any finite objects and the infinite are so general and attenuated, 
that the imagination can render no available or efficient service 
by introducing any images of the finite. 

To attempt to image the relation of dependence which exists 
between the infinite and the finite by such special and limited 
examples of it as exist between different limited beings, is 
either superfluous or misleading. The relation may be known 
as so general, like that of simple entity, as not to need an exam- 
ple; or the use of examples may introduce many extraneous 
and unimportant circumstances, which may be conceived as 
essential to the relation in question. Thus, when it is reasoned 
that self-existence, personality, the creation of another than itself, 
the possession of a complex nature — one or all, are incompatible 
with the true infinite and unconditioned, the reasoning is founded 
on the attempted exemplification of the infinite by the finite, and 
on the unessential accessories which finite images suggest. Logi- 
cally expressed, it is a case of fallacia accidentia. 

The antinomies of Kant and the essential contradictions of 
Hamilton each of which seem necessary to the mind, and each of 
which exclude the other, are all made by the mind itself in the 
attempt to illustrate the infinite by the finite. The antinomies of 
Kant are incompatibilities between an image and a relation which 
the image exemplifies, or between two images adduced to illus- 



552 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§342. 



trate different relations, or between two concepts, both of which 
are not necessary to the mind. The solution of them is to be 
found in a re-statement of the conceptions between which these 
incompatibilities are said to exist. Thus, for example, in the 
alleged antinomy involved in the propositions the world is in time 
and space and is neither finite nor infinite ; the contradiction lies 
between a fact or image borrowed from experience, and an alleged 
a priori necessity of thought. But the incompatibility of the 
one with the other arises from a misconception of what is in- 
volved in our conception of the infinite, a confounding of the 
extended in space with space itself. When Hamilton says we 
must conceive of space as a bounded or a not bounded sphere, he 
introduces the image of an object existing in space and limited 
in space, in order to illustrate space itself, and confounds the 
one witli the other. 

We observe still further, (b.) that the absolute, etc., though 
knowable, is not a notion that is the product of reasoning, 
inductive or deductive, or that can be defined in a system of logical 
classification. 

It cannot be inferred by induction, because, as has been shown, 
it is assumed in the very process of induction, as its necessary 
condition. (Cf. §§ 237, 240.) 

It cannot be deduced by syllogistic reasoning, because, as has 
been shown, all deduction rests either on a previous process of 
induction, or on the intuitions of time and space. (Cf. § 226, 7, 8.) 
But induction requires the absolute as its condition. 

Nor can the concept be defined for the ends of logical classifi- 
cation. The infinite is not properly co-ordinate with the finite, 
for the reason that it must be assumed as the ground of all such 
classification. Every notion or concept of every finite existence 
implies the unconditioned, and holds some relation to it, but its 
relations are not necessarily used in defining the notion for logical 
or scientific ends. The relations of substance and attribute, as 
used in such definition and classification, are applicable only to 
objects, which for their existence and their relations are depend- 
ent on the fixed conditions of finite being. They imply the 
presence of time and space relations, and the limitations of the 
powers of created beings by the laws which are determined by 
these relations. The cause and effect, the adaptations and ends, 



§ 343. FINITE AND CONDITIONED INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE. 553 

which logic usually recognizes in its operations, are fixed in a 
similar manner by established forces and laws. 

The so-called categories — i. e., the generic relations which are 
supreme and final in scientific definition and classification — can- 
not be applied to the infinite, because the infinite is required and 
assumed for the explanation of these very categories. These 
categories rest upon the infinite, and presuppose it. 

We next affirm positively that the absolute is and can be known 
as the correlate which must be necessarily assumed to explain and 
account for the finite universe. 

If the absolute is necessary to explain the finite, then it holds 
some relations to it. If it is its correlate, it must be connected 
with it by some relations. What these relations are, it is not 
needful to inquire. All that we need here to urge, is, it is so far 
from being true, that because it is absolute it is not related, 
that, on the contrary, it cannot be the absolute without being 
known as related. We cannot know that it is, without knowing, 
to a certain degree, what it is. If it is necessary to the mind to 
assume the absolute in order to explain the infinite, then the 
finite is certainly explained by these relations which it holds to 
the absolute. These relations must be real, else our knowledge 
is a fiction. They must be capable of expression in language. 
The relations between the finite and the infinite need not, of 
course, be the same as those which exist between the finite and 
the finite, but they must be real and cognizable relations. 

§ 343. The apprehension of the absolute is an act 

/» t 77 7 77 7 /•/••* ^7 The absolute ap- 

of knowledge, even when called an act of faith or feel- pretended by 

• rPfSOS^ the intellect. 

mg. (Li. § zoo.; 

Hamilton opposes the one to the other, as faith to knowledge, 
because he affirms that to know is always " to condition ;" 
and therefore if we know the unconditioned, we must con- 
dition the unconditioned, and limit the infinite. His doctrine 
is, that "we believe the infinite, but do not know it to be. The 
sphere of our faith, is wider than the sphere of our knowledge." 
But to know as related, is not the same as to condition in the 
special signification in which the unconditioned and the infinite 
are opposed to the conditioned and the finite. The knowledge 
of the unconditioned may be a priori, intuitive, and neces- 
sary, but it is knowledge nevertheless. It may be higher than 
24 



554 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§344. 



any reasoned or logically defined knowledge, but it is still 
knowledge. 

To call it faith, in any but a purely technical and privatB 
sense of the word, is to put it out of all relation to knowledge. 
To contrast it with knowledge in respect to its essential charac- 
teristics, is to weaken the very foundations on which both 
knowledge and science are made to rest. Especially is this the 
case, if this so-called faith is referred to an impotence of the 
intellect, and is made to depend on the conscious imbecility and 
known limitations of the powers. This is so far from being true, 
that, to know the absolute, is to know in the highest and the 
most positive sense possible to the mind. For if we cannot 
assume the infinite, we can neither define nor reason the finite. 
Without the intuition of the unconditioned, it is impossible to 
have any grounded science of the conditioned. 

§ 344. But though we have a real and proper 
haS*ttvSy ne or knowledge of the absolute, we do not therefore 
adequately. a ttain to an adequate and exhaustive, or what is 
often called an absolute knowledge of it. But this forms no ob- 
jection to the reality of this knowledge. Indeed, an exhaustive 
knowledge, even of the finite, is only ideally conceivable, but is in 
fact impossible. An absolute knowledge of all the relations of 
an individual object — e. g., a mass of rock, a tree, an animal, or a 
man, would imply a complete mastery of all the relations which 
each holds to every other object in the universe, in respect to its 
properties and ends — in other words, an exhaustive knowledge 
of the universe itself. 

For man, the unexhausted finite must ever be as 

Thefinitenni- . , m 

Terse infinite to the infinite. But the tact that he knows the finite in 

our knowledge. ... 

part, is not inconsistent with the proposition that he 
knows it in truth. Nor ought the fact that man knows the in- 
finite but in part, to be used to prove that, so far as he knows it, 
he does not know it as it is. To man there is, in both finite and 
infinite, a background always unexplored, and which, perhaps, 
never can be explored by man. If this is so, then the finite is as 
the infinite to him. The limited forest, into the mazes of which 
the child has not yet penetrated, the shallow abyss the depths of 
which he has not ventured to sound, are to him the symbols of 
infinitude. 



§ 345. FINITE AND CONDITIONED — INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE. 555 

In both finite and infinite, there is a common mystery, which 
cannot be overcome, and that is the mystery of self-existence. It 
does not relieve this mystery, to accept the fact of self-evolved 
and self-evolving forces and laws ; nor does it increase it, to accept 
the fact of a self-existent creating intelligence whom we assume 
to explain the order and thought of the finite universe. 

We may then positively affirm that the absolute is 
a thinking agent. The universe is a thought as well JJSnkta S °a U enf 
as a thing. As fraught with design, it reveals thought 
as well as force. The thought includes the origination of the 
forces and their laws, as well as the combination and use of 
them. These thoughts must relate to the whole universe. If so, 
it follows that the universe is controlled by a single thought, and 
is the thought of an individual thinker. If gravitation every- 
where prevails, and gravitation is a thought as well as a thing, 
then the universe, so far as it depends on and is affected by 
gravitation, is a single thought. But a thought implies a think- 
ing agent, and if the universe is a single thought, it was thought 
by one thinking agent. That this thinking person should be 
self-existent, involves no greater mystery than a self-existent thing 
or system of things. 

§ 345. We assume that this Absolute exists, in 
order that thought and science may be possible. We su ^"f Jp e a |; 
do not demonstrate his being by deduction, because P la j n t ho,1 s ht 

° J 7 and science. 

we must believe it in order to reason deductively. 
We do not infer this by induction, because induction supposes it; 
but we show that every man who believes in either, or in both, 
must assume it, or give up his confidence both in these processes 
and in their results. We do not demonstrate that God exists, but 
that every man must assume that He is. We analyze the several 
processes of knowledge into their underlying assumptions, and 
we find that the one assumption which underlies them all is a self- 
existent intelligence, who not only can be known by man, but who 
must be known by man in order that man may know any thing 
besides. In analyzing our psychological processes, we develop 
and demonstrate an ultimate truth, and that is the truth 
which the unsophisticated intellect of child and man requires 
and accepts, that there is a self-existent personal intelligence, 
on whom the universe depends for the being and the relations of 



556 



THE HUMAN INTELLECT. 



§345. 



which it consists. We are, therefore, not alone justified — we are 
compelled — to conclude our analysis of the human intellect with 
the assertion, that its processes involve the assumption that there 
is an uncreated Thinker, whose thoughts can be interpreted by 
the created intellect which is made in His image. 



WtfDEX. 



Absolut 3 , (se9 Infinite ;) original meaning of, 
545 ; the Hegelian 6ense, 546 ; used in the 
concrete and abstract, 546. 
Abstract thinking, 325 ; concepts, 332. 
Abstraction, 328. 

Acquired sense-perceptions, chapter on, 132- 
150 ; examples of, 132 ; denned, do. ; import- 
ance of, 132, 3 ; many gained very early, 
133; of smell and hearing, 133, 4; of sight, 
134; of distance, of magnitude, 134, 6; or 
Bize, 136 ; mistaken judgments of both, do. ; 
of percepts appropriate to touch, 137, 8 ; of 
place of sensations, 139; of control of bod- 
ily motions, do. ; provisions for, 139-141 ; 
how controlled, 141-143; involve memory, 
145 ; and induction, 146 ; infants capable of 
such inductions, 146, 7 ; objections, 148 ; 
from tbe case of animals, 148, 9 ; other ac- 
quisitions of the infant, 149. 

Activity of the soul, essential to its nature, 
18 ; essential to knowledge, 42 ; in sense- 
perception, chapter on, 180 ; is attested by 
consciousness, 181 ; varies in energy, do. ; 
success depends on attention, do. ; differs in 
different men, 182 ; shown in innervation 
of organs, do.; directed to different objects, 
183; selects and combines, 184; separates 
single objects in infancy, 185 ; continued 
through life, do.; illustrated in different 
men, 185 ; easily performed, 186. 

Adaptation, 50J ; how related to design, do. 

^Esthetics, its relations to psychology, 8. 

Agassiz, on species, 353 ; on classification, 414. 

Analogy of nature, 393. 

Analysis, involved in knowledge, 46. 

Analytical reasoning in mathematics, 378. 

Anthropology, defined, 2. 

Antinomies of Kant, and Hamilton, 475. 

Apperception, 62, 3. 

Aristotle, division of powers of the soul, 31 , 2 ; 
theory of sense-perception, 192 ; enumera- 
tion of laws of association, 231 ; on univer- 
sal, 340: regarded the middle term as cau- 
sal, 374. 5 ; fourfold division of causes, 499. 

Aruauld, theory of sense-perception, 195. 

Association of ideas, 210; chapter on, 225- 
251; other terms for, 225 : importance and 
mystery of, 225, G ; method of discussion, 
227; division of, do. ; not explained by bod- 
ily organization, 227, 8 ; defect of all phys- 
iological explanations, 228, 9; actual influ- 
ence of the body, 229 ; exercised by means of 
psychical states, 230, 1 ; vital sensations may 
act as links of association, do. ; ideas do 
not attract one another, 231, 2 ; crude state- 
ments of Hobbes and others, do. ; relations 
do not attract ideas, 232 ; relations stated 



as three, seven, two, and one, 232-4 ; la\f 
of redintegration, 234 ; how far satisfactory. 
235 ; objection, 236 ; the real solution, 237 ; 
explains phenomena, 237, 8 ; associations 
with sensible objects, 239; of home, do. ; 
relations of acquisition and reproduction 
the same, 239, 40 ; secondary laws of asso- 
ciation defined and named, 241 ; discussed, 
241, 2 ; apparent exceptions to, 243 ; Hobbes' 
often-quoted illustration, do. ; two theories 
in explanation, 244 ; capable of interrup- 
tion and control, 245, 6 ; not the only power 
of the soul, 246 ; indirectly controlled, 247 ; 
relation to babits, question concerning, 
248, 9 ; higher and lower laws of, 250 ; prev- 
alence of higher, 250 ; of lower, 251 ; casual 
associations, 251, 2 ; in changes of fashions, 
252 ; the moral influence of, do. ; influence 
on language, 253; on philosophy, do. 

Associational psychology, 38-40; prominent 
writers, 38 ; explanation of necessary truths, 
33 ; fundamental error, 39-40 ; usually ma- 
terialistic, 40. 

Associational school, their views of intui- 
t ons, 436. 

Astronomy, discoveries in, 397, 9. 

Attention defined, 47 ; beginnings of, 152,3; 
Stewart's theory, 178 ; can be given to two 
objects at once, 178,9; is the utmost at- 
tention possible to more than one? 179. 

Attribute, relations most frequently used as, 
168 ; sensations so used, 170, 1 ; etymology 
and meaning of, 525 : in the abstract, 525 ; 
material ; indicate but do not constitute 
matter, 530. 

Auxiliary lines in geometry, 384, 5. 

Axiom*, mathematical, 382, 3 ; Analytical and 
s.v nthetical, 382 ; are they properly premi- 
ses? 383. 

Pain, A , an associationalist, 38. 

Being, correlate of knowledge, 44 ; varieties 
of, 45 ; some more lasting and important, 
do. ; contrasted with phenomenon, do. ; one 
kind mistaken for another, do.; not knnwn 
apart from relations, do. ; category of, 440 ; 
fundamental in what sense, do.; different 
sorts of, d r >. ; the most abstract, 447; how 
explained, do. ; concrete known first, do. ; 
knowledge of. expressed in propositions, 
448; not a relation, do. ; cannot be defined, 
do.; treated as an attribute, do.; inde- 
terminate, do. ; both spiritual and material, 
directly known, 449. 

Berkeley's view of sensation, 103; theory of 
sense-perception, 197 ; doctrine of the con" 
cept, 342, 3. 

557 



5o$ 



INDEX. 



Biran, de, M., views of intuitions, 437 ; theory 
of causation, 493-495 ; how far correct, 494. 

Black's, Dr., discovery of carbonic acid gas, 
395. 

Blind, the, when restored to sight, 137, 8 ; 
how they judge of form, size, etc., 138 ; the 
reports of, critically noticed, 163-165. 

Bodily organism, 97, 8. 

Bonnet, theory of vibration, 227. 

Brain, the organ of the soul, 38. 

Brown, Dr. T., denies consciousness of ego, 
69 ; admits it, 70 ; theory of tactual and 
other sensations, 123 ; theory of sense-per- 
ception, 199 ; of the nature of the concept, 
343; of intuitions, 436; theory of causation, 
484, 5. 

Buxton, Sir T. F., advice on memory, 274. 

Categories. (See Intuition.) 

Causation, and causality, chapter on, 481- 
499 ; as a law principle and distinguished, 
481, 2; the principle of, intuitively evident, 
484, 6 ; reasons for, 487 ; resolved into a 
time-relation, 484 ; by Hume, do. ; by 
Brown, do.; by J. S. Mill, 485; not a rela- 
tion of time, 495, 6 ; not explained by in- 
duction, 488, 91 ; nor by association, 489 ; 
not gained by experience, inner or outer, 
492-495; Locke's views, 4"<2; views of K. 
Collard and M. de Biran 493 ; theory of De 
Biran, 493-5; two positions of, 493; how 
far correct, 494-5 ; denied to matter, 494 ; 
denied to created spirits, 4J5; Malebranche, 
do.; theories a priori, 4 5, 6; explained by 
law of contradiction, 493; Wolf, Kant He- 
gel, do ; Hamilton's explanation by the law 
of Uie conditioned, 496-9 ; objections to, 
498, 9 ; conclusion, true doctrine of, 499. 

Cause distinguished from condition, 483 ; four 
classes of, 499. 

Cerebralists. (See Cerebral Psychology.) 

Cerebral Psychology, 3G ; supposes conscious- 
ness, 37. 

Clarke, t*., definition of space and time, 479. 

Classification, how it arises, 335 ; by children 
and savages, 336; in science, do.; relations 
to knowledge, 337 ; significance of, 338 ; as- 
sumes final cause. 514. 

Coleridge, S. T., on the arts of memory, 276, 7. 

Complex notions, 333. 

Concept, formation of, chapter on, 327-339 ; 
of material objects, 327; when it begins, 
do.; similarity discerned, 328; involves 
analysis, do. ; attributes distinguished, do. ; 
called abstraction, do.; to prescind, do. ; 
comparison, do. ; generalization, 329 ; pre- 
Oication, do. ; assumes substance and attri- 
bute, do. ; appellations concept, 330 ; and 
notion, do. ; not a percept, do. ; no* an im- 
age, do.; r.-lative, do.; a mental product, 
do. ; universal, 331 ; predicable, do. ; re- 
spects attributes only, 332; concrete and 
abstr*ct, do. ; simple and complex, 333; 
content and extent, 334 ; mutual relations 
of the two, 334-337 ; how far they add to 
knowledge, 338 ; theories of nature of, chap- 
ter on, 339-340 ; Socrates and Plato on, 339 ; 
Aristotle, do. ; Porphyry, the Realists, Nom- 
inalists, and Conceptualists, 340; ihomas 
Hobbes, 340, 1; John Locke, G. W.Leibnitz, 
George B. Berkeley and D. Hume, 341-3 ; 
Reid, Dr. T. Brown, Sir W. Hamilton, 343 ; 
J. S. Mill, 344; I. Kant, 344; Hegel, 345; 
nature of, chapter on, 345-357 ; distinguish- 
ed from the act, 345 ; implies substance and 



attribute, do.; is relative, 346 ; founded on 
similarity, do. ; classifies, do. ; gives import 
to names, 347 ; the import explained by in- 
dividuals, do. ; nominalists how far right, 
347, 8 ; the conceptionalist, 349, 50 ; the real- 
ist, 350, 2; mistakes of the realist, 352, 3; 
why language aids thinking, 353, 4 ; sym- 
bolic and intuitive knowledge, 354-357; 
formed by judgment, 358 ; how related to 
it, 359 ; in mathematics, 380 ; of space and 
time objects, 464, 5 ; mathematical, do. ; of 
geometry, do. ; of number, do. ; of space 
and time, 476, 7. 

Conceptualists, the, 339 ; strife adjusted, 349. 

Concrete thinking, 325 ; concepts, 332. 

Oondiliac and school, on the origin of know- 
lodge, 436. 

Conditioned. (See Infinite.) 

Consciousness, and natural consciousness, 
chapter on, 61-67 ; defined, 61 ; applied to 
any act of knowledge, 61 ; a collective term 
for all the intellectual states, 62; meta- 
phorical uses of, do. ; proper meaning, do. ; 
called inner sense, do. ; called appercep- 
tion, do. ; German equivalent for, 63 ; called 
reflection, do. ; exercised in two forms, do ; 
the two .defined, 64 ; natural consciousness 
as an act, d<>. ; an act of knowledge, do ; 
results in a product, 65 ; is mi generis, do. ; 
consciousness, the object, 66. 7 ; object com- 
plex, do. ; elements threefold, 67 ; relations 
to one another, 67, 8 ; elements not regard- 
ed with equal attention, <oS ; the activity an 
object, do. ; also the ego, 70 1 ; different 
views, 68, 9; proof that we are conscious 
of the ego, 70; unconscious admissions, 
70, 1 ; are we conscious of objects ? 71, 2 ; 
summary of doctrine of consciousness, i'2 ; 
object of c. a condition of being, 72 ; Pes- 
cartes' doctrine, do. ; c. involves all the cat- 
egories, 73 ; development and growth of c, 
74, 5 ; exercised more or less completely in 
different persons, 75 ; capacity for, not de- 
veloped, 76; latent modiiications of, do. ; 
capable of degrees, 76,7; Leibnitz's doc- 
trine of, 77 ; philosophical or reflect ive, 
chapter on, 78-93 ; characterized by at en- 
tion, 78; the morbid consciousness in chil- 
dren, hypochondriacs, etc., 78, 9 ; egoistic 
consciousness, 79; ethical type, do. ; in .he 
reflective attention is persistent, 80; com- 
prehensive, 81 ; comparative and classify- 
ing, 81,2; interpretive, 82; searches for 
conditions and laws, do. ; relations to nat- 
ural consciousness, 82, 3; imparts new 
knowledge, 83 ; in what sense, do. ; rela- 
tions of language to each 84, 5 ; does not 
create phenomena, 85 ; dangers from exact 
terminology, do. ; psychology, tried by the 
language of common life, 85, 6 ; by the ac- 
tions, 87 ; conditions of the successful in- 
terpretation of both, 88, 9 ; why nun are 
so positive in their philosophical opinions, 

88 ; explains slow pi-ogress of psychology, 

89 ; explains difficult^ s in studying psy- 
ch ologv, 90-92. 

Conservative faculty. (See Memory.) 

Content, of notion, 334. 

Contradiction, law of, 453. 

Copernicus, discovery, 397. 

Copula, force of, 361, 3. 

Cousin, on origin of knowledge, 425; views 

of intuition, 437. 
Critical or speculative stage of knowledge, 

52. 



INDEX. 



559 



Dalton's discovery of chemical equivalents, 
395, 6. 

Dana, on species, 353. 

Darwin, on species, 352. 

Davy's discovery, 396, 7. 

Deaf mutes,reason why they cannot speak,142. 

Deduction, chapter on, 366-377 ; how related 
to induction, 367, 8 ; its two forms, 369, 71 ; 
is not explained hy the dictum de otnni et 
nullo, 371,2; but rests on the relation of 
reason to consequent, 373; this rests on 
causation, 374, 7 ; varieties of, chapter on, 
378-391 ; various classes of, 378 ; probable 
378, 9 ; mathematical, 380, 3 ; not purely 
deduction, 383, 4; examples of, 384,5; im- 
mediate or logical, 386, 7 ; distinguished 
from the process of preparation, 388, 9 ; 
does it add "to knowledge ? 339. 

Definition, 361, 3. 

Democritus, theory of sense-perception, 191. 

Descartes, cogito, ergo sum, 72 ; theory of 
sense-perception, 193, 5 ; on innate ideas, 
442 ; on final cause, 509. 

Design, or final cause, chapter on, 498-523 ; 
(see Final Cause ;) how related to adapta- 
tion, 499. 

Development, of the intellect explained, 51, 2 ; 
order and stages of, do. ; of consciousness, 
stages of, 74, 6 ; of sense-perception, chap- 
ter on, 150-165; of touch, 154-156; of vis- 
ion, 156-159. 

Dianoetic faculty, 59. 

Dictum de omni et nullo, 372. 

Discovery and Invention, the conditions of, 
40J-413; attention, 410; familiarity, 411; 
constructive imagination, 411, 12 ; wise judg- 
ment, 413; ready deduction, do.; reference 
to Divine mind, 414, 15 ; experiment, 415. 

Diversity or otherness, relation of, 449 ; pro- 
position expressing it, do. ; relation to nega- 
tion, 450. 

Division of the concept, 364. 

Dreams, and dreaming. 283-286 ; dreams, the 
soul active constantly, 283, 4; the soul acts 
with feeble energy, 284; with varying 
energy, do. ; representative power active, 
do. ; irregular, do. ; the judgment feeble, 
do. ; the reasoning power, 284, 5 ; conscious- 
ness feeble, 286; estimates of time in, do.; 
moral responsibility in, do.; the emotion 
in, do.; the activity of the will in, do. 

Dugald Stewart. (See Stewart.) 

Duration, how related to the soul's acts, 456 ; 
applied to two objects, 457 ; relations of 
do. ; void, do ; relations to extension, 458 ; 
transferred to material acts, do ; measures 
of, whence derived, do. ; language of, 459 : 
how related to time, do. ; affirmed of events, 
but not of time, do. 

Ego, the, known in consciousness. 70, 1 ; de- 
nied by many, do. ; distinguished from the 
s-lf, 83, 4. 

Elaborative faculty, 59. 

Empedocles, theory of sense-perception, 190, 1. 

Enthymeme, the, 369. 

Error, possible of relations only, 45; of the 
senses belong to the acquired sense-per- 
ceptions, 144 ; two classes of, 144, 5. 

Ethic3, its relation to psychology, 7, 8 ; as- 
sumes final cause, 520. 

Essence, 362. 

Event, defined, 482 ; different classes of, 482, 3. 

Excluded middle, law of, 453. 

Extended objects limited, 43. 



Extension known in perception, 106 ; in vi* 
ion superficial only. 128; extra organic, 
how acquired, 154, 5; known in sense-per- 
ception, 455 ; blended with matter, do. ; the 
several relations of, 456 ; relations to dura- 
tion, 458,9; related to space, 473; limits 
objects, 474; affirmed of objects not of 
space, 475. 

Extent , of notion defined, 334; of mathemat- 
ical concepts, 382. 

Externality, known in perception, 105, 6 ; in 
touch, 122 ; two meanings of, do. ; of the 
body to the soul, 123, 4; of one body to 
another, do. ; extra organic, how acquired, 
154-156. 

Eye, the structure of, 126 ; single objects seen 
with two eyes, 129, 30 ; dignity of 131, 2. 

Faculties of the soul, 24-34; the soul, not 
parts or organs, 24; often so miscon- 
ceived, 25 ; do not act apart, do. ; grounds 
of belief in, 25-27 ; states like and unlike, 
26; one dependent on another, do.; distin- 
guishable by a prominent element, do.; 
more obvious than powers of matter, 27; 
why called human, 28 ; not independent, 
do. ; relations of, important in education, 
28, 9 ; history of doctrine of, 31, 2 ; syn- 
onyms for, 33, 4 ; of the intellect, how con- 
ceived, 53, 4; leading faculties named, 54 
severally denned, 54-60. 

Fainting. (See Phantasy.) 

Fichte, T. G., on the categories, 444. 

Final cause, chapter on, 499-523 ; terms ex> 
plained, division of causes, 500 ; the rela- 
tion discerned a priori, 501 ; reasons for 
the position, 501-505; the mind seeks this 
relation, 501 ; acknowledges it to be higher, 
do.; is of service in discovery, do.; the 
only basis of deduction, 503 ; explains or- 
ganic phenomena, 502 ; conspicuous in the 
highest order of beings, 504 ; does not dis- 
place efficient causes, 505; objections to the 
position, 505-513 , men mistake, 505 ; they 
cannot test their inductions, 506 ; the rela- 
tion subjective only, do. ; involves two 
principles, 508 ; hinders disc overy, 509 ; 
.Bacon and Descartes on, do. ; adaptations 
are necessary conditions only, 510 ; limi- 
ted, 511 ; cannot be ascribed to an unlimi- 
ted Being, 512 ; application of the principle, 
do. ; in metaphysics, do. ; in induction, do. ; 
in the formation of the concepts do. ; 
in classification, 513; in the nation of an 
individual, do; as a rule of truth, 514; in 
mathematics, do.; in geology and paleon- 
tology, 515 ; in phil. geography, 516: in 
comp. anatomy, 517 ; in physiology, do. ; 
in anthropology, do. ; in psychology, 519; 
in ethics, 520 ; in theol gy, 521 ; two classes 
of theories of God, 521 ; reasons for accept- 
ing a personal God, 522. 

Finite and the Infinite, (see Infinite); and 
conditioned, the chapter on, 541; result 
of processes of knowledge, do.; the finite 
universe how conceived, 542 ; is limited and 
conditioned, 543. 

First principle-. (See Intuition.) 

First truth-. (See Intuition.) 

Forgetfulness. (.^ee Memory.) 

Forgotten. (See Memory.) 

Formal cause, 500. 

Formal calories, 446; chapter on, 446-455. 

Forms, of thought and being. 324; of know- 
ledge, Kant ana Hamilton error, concersr 
ing, 538. 



560 



INDEX. 






Franklin's discovery of electricity, 394, 5. 
Functions of the soul defined, 33. 

Galileo, discovery by, 398. 

Gassendi, illustration of memory, 263. 

Generalization, 319, 22. 

Geography, Phil., assumes final cause, 329. 

Geology, assumes final cause, 516. 

Geometrical reasoning, (see Mathematical 
quantities) ; constructions of, 302, 3 ; fig- 
ures, construction of, 304 ; quantities nv a- 
surable, 305 ; example of, 335 ; concepts, 
how formed, 466 ; rests on what assump- 
tion ', 467 ; postulates of, do. 

drod, belief in, assumed in inductive and sci- 
entific knowledge, 408. 

Habit, relation to association, 248 ; theory of, 
do. ; often supposes a difficulty, do. ; bodily, 
do.; mental, 249 ; emotional, do. 

Hallucination-!, 216; case of Nicolai, 293 ; not 
purely physical, do. ; how explained, do. 

Hamilton, Sir Wm., division of faculties, 32 ; 
consciousness of Ego, 69 ; theory of extra- 
organic perception, 156, 7 ; doctrine of la- 
tent modifications, 244 ; on the nature of 
the concept. 343; Hamilton's dictum of the 
syllogism, 372; on origin of knowledge, 
424; positive and negative necessity, 441 ; 
theory of causation by law of the condi- 
tioned, 495-498, sqq. ; of primary, secondary 
and secundo-primary qualities, 535 ; on the 
real and phenomenal, 538, 9; negative 
thinking, 546-550; on the Infinite, 549. 

Harvey's discovery prompted bv final cause, 
502. 

Hauser, Casper, how the world looked to, 
162. 

Hearing, sense-perceptions of, 113-116 ; organ, 
113 ; varieties, how far distinguishable, 114, 
15; condition of language, 115; expresses 
feeling, do. ; dignity, 116 ; acquired per- 
ceptions of, 133, 4. 

Hegel, on the nature of the concept, 445 ; on 
the categories, 445 ; being equals nothing, 
448 ; error, do. 

Herbart, doctrine of faculties, 32 ; theory of 
sense-perception, 204. 

Herbert Spencer, (see Spencer,) an associa- 
tionalist, 38; doctrine of necessary truths, 
39-40. 

Hobbes, crude views of association, 231, 2 ; 
often-quoted illustration, 243. 

Hume denies consciousness of ego, 68 ; enum- 
eration of laws of association, 232 ; doctrine 
of the concept, 342 ; on tuitions, 436 ; the- 
ory of causation, do. 

Ideals, nature of, 301 ; varieties of, 304, 6; re- 
lated to individual experience, 306, 7. 

Identity, law of, etc., do not explain deduc- 
tion, 371, 2; category of, 452; affirmable of 
spirit and matter, do. ; logical law of do. ; 
concerns concepts, do.; guards against 
what, 546 ; founded on real identity, misap- 
plication of by Hegel and others, do. ; of 
material substance, do. 

Image, technical name for objects of repre- 
sentation, 209 ; relation to concept, 349 ; of 
space and time objects, 457. 

Imagination, a modification of representation, 
211; mathematical, 212; poetic, 213; philo- 
sophical, do. ; the, chapter on, 295-318; 
materials and conditions lor, 295, 6 ; space 



and time, 295 ; thought-relations, 296 ; ma. 
terial qualities, do. ; spiritual, do. ; how far 
can it modify these materials? 296-301 ; ita 
combining office, 301 ; idealization of space 
and time objects, the mathematical imag 
ination, 301, 3 ; psychical idealization, 
303, 4 ; capable of growth and culture, 
307, 9 ; constantly exercised, do. ; the poetic 
309, 12; the philosophic, 312, 14; the ethi- 
cal, 314, 15 ; the religious, 316-318. 
Imaging, of concepts, 349 ; of space and time 

objects, 460 ; of the infinite, etc., 316-318. 
Individual, notion of, rests on final cause, 499. 
Induction, relation to psychology, 35; how 
related to deduction, 367,8; chapter on, 
391-416; loosely defined, 392; the so-called 
purely logical, do. ; proper induction, 393; 
very frequent, do. ; how differs from simple 
judgment, do. ; importance of a correct 
theory, of, do.; in science, 394-399; why in 
science more difficult, 400-402; the prob- 
lem of, difficult, 403 ; involves certain as- 
sumptions, 404-408 ; three rules of induc- 
tion, 408 ; conditions of successful hypothec 
sis, 410-413 ; relation of experiments, 415. 
Inductive science. (See Induction.) 
Infants capable of induction, 446, 7 ; condi- 
tion of the soul in, 150, 2 ; learns to touch, 
162. 
Infinite, unconditioned and absolute, chap- 
ter on, 541-556 ; relations to the finite, 541, 2 ; 
literal import of infinite, 543; transferred 
from quantity to quality, 544 ; variety of 
senses of, do. ; the terms used in the con- 
crete and abstract, 546 ; not negative con- 
ceptions, 547 ; not produced by negative 
thinking, do. ; Hamilton and Mansel, do. ; 
not unrelated, 548; Spinoza, do. ; Hobbes' 
doctrine of, do. ; not the sum total of being, 
549 ; totality not infinite, do. ; not a matter 
of quantity, do. ; not one and simple, «o.; 
is knowable, that and what it is, 550; Her- 
bert Spencers doctrine of, do.; <annot be 
imagined, 551 ; Kant's antinomies explain- 
ed, do. ; not known by reasoning or induc- 
tion, 552 ; not defined for classification, do. ; 
holds relations to the finite, do.; known by 
knowledge, and not by faith or feeling, 
do.; not known exhaustively, 554; self-ex- 
istence common to the finite and infinite, 
555; is a thinking person, 555; relations 
to space and time, 556. 
Innate Ideas, < octrine of, 435. 
Inner sense. (See Consciousness.) 
Insanity, 294, 5. 

Intellect, growth and development of, 51, 2 ; 
rules for culture of, 52, 3 ; faculties of, 54; 
learns to control the body, 141, 3 ; its state 
before sense-perception, 150. 
Intuition and Intuitive knowledge, 58, Part 
IV., 419-556; defined and enumerated, chap- 
ter on, 419-133; not pained by ordinary 
processes, 422 ; referred by some to a spe- 
cial faculty, do. ; various appellations for, 
do. ; not first in time, 422 ; Locke's polemic 
against, do. ; first in logical importance, 
do.; in what sense principles, 423; differ 
ent senses of the word, do. ; how related 
to origin of knowledge, 424 ; stages of the 
mind's progress in, 425-427 ; ( xplanatioo 
of the limited assent to them, 41:7 ; tested 
by the language and actions of men, 428, 9 ; 
three criteria, 429 ; logically independent, 
do.; divided into three classes, 433 ; theo- 
ries of, chapter on. 433-445 ; of direct men- 



INDEX. 



561 



tal vision, 434 ; light of nature, do. ; innate 
ideas, do ; school of Locke, 435 ; Condillac, 
4*> ; Hume, do. ; of the associational school, 
do. ; Dr. Reid and the Scottish school, 437 ; 
the French school, do.; Kant and his 
school, 438 ; criticism of, 439, 40 ; Hamil- 
ton, 441 ; of faith, do. ; Schleiermacher, 
443; ethical school, 444; J. G. Fichte, do.; 
Schellir r and Hegel, 446 ; Herbart, do. ; 
Trendelenburg, do. 

Judgment, chapter oq, 358-366 ; forms the 
concept, 359; how related to the concept, 
do. ; psychological and logical, do. ; the 
logical judgment, 360; force of the copula, 
36L; judgment of content, do.; essence, 
362 ; judgment of extent, 363 ; importance 
to science, 364 ; propositions of extent and 
content how related, 365. 

Kant, theory of sense-perception, 203 ; on the 
nature of the concept, 345 ; on origin of 
knowledge, 424; views of categories and 
intuitions, 438 ; criticism of, 439 ; of practi- 
cal reason, 442 ; doctrine of space and time, 
478 ; on causations, 495 ; error concerning 
forms of knowledge, 538 ; the thing in itself, 
532 ; on the real and phenomenal, 540 ; an- 
tinomies, 550. 

Kepler, discovery by, 398 ; exclamation, 414. 

Knowledge defined and discussed, 42-50 ; how 
far definable, 42 ; is action, do. ; exercised 
under conditions, do.; these various, 43; 
two classes of objects, 43 ; preparation of 
objects, 44 ; involves certainty, do. ; being 
its correlate, do.; involves apprehension, 
of relations, 45 ; objection, do. ; involves 
analysis and synthesis, 46 ; when the pro- 
cess is complete, 46, 7 ; these products ob- 
jects of subsequent knowledge, 47 ; repre- 
sentative and represented knowledge, do. ; 
acts of kn. diverse in energy, do.; atten- 
tion, 47, 8; some objects known more easi- 
ly than others, do. ; psychological and phil- 
osophical kn., 48 ; critical stage of kn., 50 ; 
direct and reflex, of matter and spirit, 534 ; 
direct involves apprehension of being as 
well as relations, do. ; reflex, difficnlt to 
analyze, do. 

Language, relation to psychological truth, 
84; of common life, a test of truth, 85 ; in- 
fluenced by association, 253; relation to 
thought, 226, 7 ; the study of, 327. 

Law, its relations to psychology, 8. 

Law and power, 481. 

Leibnitz, doctrine of latent consciousness, 
76; latent modifications in association, 
244; on the sufficient reason, 375 ; criticism 
on Locke's doctrine of rngin of knowledge, 
424; on intuitions, 465, sufficient reason 
as applied by Wolf, 491. 

Light of nature, 434. 

Limit and limitation of objects and events, 459. 

Limited, the distinguished from the condi- 
tioned, 548. 

Locke, doctrine of reflection and conscious- 
ness, 63 ; theory of sense-perception, 195, 6 ; 
doctrine of knowledge, 196 ; of association, 
231 ; on the syllogism, 434 ; on lunate ideas, 
383 ; on intuitions, etc., 422 ; theory of 
causation, 491 ; relation to Mill and Hume, 
do. ; to de Biran, do. ; to his own doctrine 
of knowledge, do.; on substance, 532; 
ou primary and secondary qualities, 536. 



Logic, its relation to Psychology, 9 ; to meta- 
physics, 10. 

Logical relation of processes and products, 
49; contrasted with psychological, 50; do 
not always coincide, do. 



Maas, theory of association, 235. 

Malebranche, theory of sense-perception, 195; 
of causation, 494. 

Mansel, H. L., on negative thinking, and on 
the Infinite, etc., 547-550. 

Materialism accounted for, 12-13 ; arguments 
in favor of. 14 — 17; counter-arguments^ 
17-21. 

Materialists, their views of psychology, 36. 

Mathematical affections of matter, Stewart's 
doctrine of, 535. 

Mathematical, reasoning. 380-386; its enti- 
ties or concepts, 380-383 ; into categories,, 
419-433. 

Mathematical relations, chapter on. 454; 
quantity, 465 ; concepts, two classes of, do. ; 
application to matter, do. ; to mechanics 
and chemistry, 469 ; to light, sound, and 
heat, do. ; suggested and defined by motion, 
471. 

Mathematics, rests on final cause, 514. 

Matter, relations of the soul to, 11-24 ; phe- 
nomena first attended to, 12 ; preposses- 
sions which it engenders, 13; furnishes 
language for physical phenomena, 22-24. 

Matter and form, in sense-perception, 192, 3, 

Matter, its capacity to be perceived not an 
attribute, 535, 6 ; known as being, do. ; its 
most important relations to the soul as 
sentient, do. 

Measurement involves number, 462 ; involves 
both number and magnitude, do. 

Memory a modification of representation, 
210, 11 ; chapter on, 254-278 ; essential ele- 
ments in an act of, 254-256 ; memory tech- 
nically defined, 256, 7 ; representation and 
recognition, 257 ; spontaneous and inten- 
tional, 258 ; spontaneous defined, do. ; orig- 
inal differences in, do. ; relations peculiar 
to it, 259 ; its value, do. ; requires the ration- 
al also, 260 ; the intentional memory defin- 
ed, do. ; relations to the knowing mind, 
260, 1 ; recovery of forgotten objects, 262, 3 ; 
memory as the power to retain, 263 ; how 
accounted for, do. ; figurative explanations, 
Gassendi's, do. ; ready and tenacious, do. ; 
forgetfulness, 264; forgotten knowledge 
recovered, 265, 6 ; dependence on the bodily 
condition, do. ; influenced by the season or 
the time of the day, 266 ; sudden loss of 
memory, 267 ; how explained, do. ; varie- 
ties of, 268-271 ; development of, 271, 2 ; in 
infancy, childhood and youth, do. ; culti- 
vation of the memory, 273-277; fundamen- 
tal principles, 274, Buxton's advice, do. ; 
artificial memory, do.; value, objections, 
275 ; when useful, 276 ; Coleridge's arts of 
memory, 277 ; moral conditions of, 277. 

Metaphysics, ita relations to psych., 9: to 
logic, do. ; assumes final cause, 512. 

Microcosm, the soul a, 73. 

Middle terms, 369-374; invention of, 389. 

Mill, James, an associationalist, 38; denies 
consciousness of ego, 70 ; admits it, 71 ; 
doctrine of association, 232 ; on intuition, 
436. 

Mill, John Stuart, an associationalist, 38; 
doctrine of necessary truths, 39 ; conscious- 

24* 



562 



INDEX. 



ness of ego, 70 ; doctrine of association, 
232 ; on the nature of the concept, 344 ; doc- 
trine of the syllogism, 370 ; on intuitions 
and first truths, 486 ; theory of causation, 
487 ; relation to those of Hume and Brown, 
do. ; definition of the sou), 529 ; definition of 
body, error in, do. 

Mind and matter, chapter on, 525-540. 

Mnemonics. (See Memory.) 

Morell, J. D., perception into classification, 
176. 

Motion bodily, provision for, by nature, 140 ; 
for combined activity, 141 ; how controlled 
by the intellect, 141-3 ; aids sense-percep- 
tion, 172. 

Motion, relation of space and time concepts 
to, 470 ; universality of, do. ; indicates posi- 
tion and rest, 471 ; suggests time relations, 
do. ; mathematical quantities, do. ; the con- 
dition of generalization, do. 

Miiller, J., theory of nerve endings in touch, 
121 ; theory of extra-organic perception, 
155 ; theory of sense-perception, do. 

Muscular sense-perceptions defined and divi- 
ded, 109; lowest in rank, do.; in touch, 
117, 18 ; first developed, 153. 

Names, significance of, 338. (See Words.) Of 
concepts, advantages of, are sensuous, 
353, 4. 

Negative notions, 448. 

Nerves, reflex action of, 99 ; afferent and 
efferent, do. ; subject to various affections, 
do. ; special function in sensation, do. 

Nervous system described, 98. 

Newton, discovery by, 407. 

Noetic faculty, 59. 

Nominalists, the, 341-47; strife adjusted, 
349, 50. 

Nothing, Hegel's use of, 450. 

Notion. (See Concept.) 

Number, how developed, 462 ; defined, 468 ; 
relations, how symbolized, do.; concepts 
of, do. ; application to magnitude, do. 

Objects — object- and subject-, 43 ; material 
distinguished from percepts, 165 ; involve 
two relations, 166 ; percepts united in space 
and time, 166-8 ; involve substance and at- 
tribute, 168-171. 

Organic sense-perceptions, 110. 

Original sense-perceptions defined, 132. 

Owen, on species, 353. 

Perception. (See Sense-perception.) 

Perception, proper, Hamilton's doctrine of, 
104 ; defined, 105-109 ; an act of knowledge, 
105; a non-ego, do.; an extended non-ego, 
106; accompanies every sense, do.; with 
varying clearness, 107 ; in inverse ratio to 
sensation-proper, do. ; in different sensa- 
tions and senses, 108 ; of touch, 120-125 ; in 
vision, 128-131 ; acquired, 132. 

•ercepts, how gained, 165 ; how combined, 
do.; distinguished from things, do.; com- 
bined into things by two stages, 166. 

Fhantasy, a modification of representation, 
211 ; chapter on, 278-295 ; defined, 278 ; ex- 
amples of, do. ; why infrequent, 278 ; faint- 
ing, sleep, etc., 278, 9 ; several suppositions 
possible, 279 ; why probably explicable by 
laws, 279 ; depend on laws of representa- 
tion, do.; bodily condition influential, 280 ; 
creative power possible in, 281 ; sleep con- 
sidored physiologically, 282; prominent 



phenomena, do.; considered psychology 
cally, 283-286; somnambulism, 2S6-294; 
insanity, 294. 

Phenomenal and real. (See Real.) 

Phenomenon defined, 34. 

Philosophical consciousness. (See Conscious- 
ness.) 

Physiology defined, 2 ; assumes final cause. 
517. 

Plato, theory of sense-perception, 191; on 
universals, 339, 40. 

Political Science, its relation to psychology* 
8. 

Porphyry's Questions on universals, 340. 

Postulates, 381. 

Power and law distinguished, 376. 

Powers of the soul. (See Faculties.) 

Predicable, 331. 

Prescind, to, 328. 

Presentation. (See Presentative Knowledge.) 

Presentative Faculty defined and divided, 
55,6. 

Presentative Knowledge, Part I., 61-2U6. 

Primary laws of association, 227-240. 

Primary Qualities, 535, 6. 

Principle, various senses of the term, 423, 4. 

Probable or problematical reasoning, 378, 9; 
founded on causes and laws, 279. 

Proposition. (See Judgment.) 

Psychological contrasted with logical rela- 
tions, 49. 

Psychology defined and vindicated, 1-11 ; im- 
properly named, 1 ; properly a science, do. ; 
relations to psychology and anthropology, 
2, 3; its phenomena peculiar, 3; known by 
consciousness, do.; interest of, do. /value 
of, promotes self-knowledge, 4 ; teaches self- 
control, do. ; promotes moral culture, do. ; 
aids in understanding others, 6 ; indispen- 
sable to educators, do. ; aids in the study 
and enjoyment of literature, 6, 7 ; the 
mother of all the human sciences, 7 ; re- 
lation to ethics, do. ; to political and social 
science, 8 ; to law, do. ; to aesthetics, do. ; to 
theology, do. ; special relation to logic and 
metaphysics, 9 ; why called phil. and met., 
10 ; disciplines to method, do. ; a branch 
of physics, 11 ; why distrusted, 11, 12 ; its 
phenomena overlooked, 12; resolved into 
material agencies, 13 ; is it a science ? 
34-41 ; the materials, whence derived, 34, 5 ; 
an inductive science, 34 ; also the science 
of induction, 35 ; objections against psy- 
chology as a science, 35, 6 ; answers, do. ; 
views of materialists, 36; of cerebralists, 
do.; views refuted, 37; phrenologists, do.; 
Associationalists, 38-40 ; a priori theory, 
40 ; wherein defective, 41 ; method of ob- 
serving and interpreting its phenomena, 
80-82 ; in what sense imparts new know- 
ledge, 83 ; aided by language, 84 ; misled 
bv exact terminology, 85; tried by the 
language of common life, 85, 6 ; by the ac- 
tions, how it can interpret both, 87 ; why 
men are so positive in their theories of, 
88 ; slow progress and divisions explained, 
89.90; special difficulties of studying, 
90, 92 

Qualities of matter, primary and secondary, 
535, 6; two and threefold classification, 
do.; Aristotle's, Descartes', and Locke's, 
do.; Reid's, Stewart's and Hamilton's, do.; 
the secundo-primary not established, do. ; 
Hamilton's locomotive energy, do. ; are th« 



INDEX. 



563 



primary qualities essential to the notion of 
matter? 536 ; do they give real knowledge ? 
539. 
Quantity, relations of, 456 ; mathematical, 
465. 

Real and phenomenal, 536-539 ; contrasted in 
two senses, do. ; Kant's doctrine of, do. ; 
Hamilton's, 540 ; their views criticised, do.; 
question not peculiar to philosophers, do. ; 
special sense of roal, do.; relations of the 
intellect trustworthy, do. 

Real categories, 540. 

Realism, truth, and significance of, 350-352 ; 
assert permanent relations, 351 ; mistakes, 
352. 

Realists. (See Realism.) 

Reason and consequent, relation of, 373, 4. 

Reason to. (See Reasoning.) 

Reasoning, deductive, chapter on, 366-377; 
reasoning implies judgment, 366, 7 ; induc- 
tive and deductive, 367; often conjoined, 
368; deductive, (see Deduction;) probable, 
378-380; mathematical, 380-386; formal, 
386, 7. 

Redintegration, law of, 234, 5 ; how far it ac- 
counts for the laws of association, 235, 6. 

Reflection, as used by Locke. 63. 

Reflective consciousness. (See Conscious- 
ness.) 

Regulative faculty, 59. 

Reid, consciousness of ego, 69 ; defective view 
of stnsation, 103 ; theory of perceiving ex- 
ternality by touch, 107 ; theory of sense- 
perception, 198 : on the nature of the con- 
cept, 342, 3 ; on axioms, 383 ; on intuition 
and first truths, 437. 

Relations involved in knowledge, 45, 6 ; ob- 
jects unrelated, 46 ; relations do not attract 
ideas, 232, 3 ; of place inassoc, 233 ; of time 
and of both, do. ; of similarity and con- 
trast, do. ; of cause and effect, do. ; of means 
and end, 234 ; general relations or catego- 
ries,^(see C. ;) formal relations, chapter on, 
446-454 ; mathematical, chapter on, 454-480. 

Relative notions, 449. 

Repetition, in sense-perception, excites in- 
terest, 173-5. 

Representation, defined, 56 ; its objects, do. ; 
conditions, 57. 

Representation and R. Kn., Part II., 206-295 ; 
defined, 206 ; not limited to sensible objects, 
do.; a creative power, 207; appellations 
for, 207, 8 ; objects of, 208 ; individual, do. ; 
involve relations, 209 ; no technical names 
for objects, of, do. ; conditions and laws of, 
210; divisions of, 210-213; interest and 
importance of, 213,14; object of, chapter 
on, 215-224 ; why needs discussion, do. ; 
three heads of inquiry, 215 ; psychical, do. ; 
transient, do. ; not spectrum or hallucina- 
tion, 216 ; intellectual, do. ; relation of ob- 
ject to its original, 217 ; comparable to no 
other, do. ; does not resemble its objects, 
do.; contradictions involved, do. ; no re- 
semblance in memory or recognition, do. ; 
mental pictures less exciting, 219 ; consist 
of fewer elements, do. ; recalled slowly in 
parts, 220; objects of imagination, 221; 
usefulness of representative objects to 
thought, do. ; less distracting than realities, 
222 ; more easily compared, do. ; and gen- 
eralized, do. ; serviceable in action, 224 ; 
conditions and laws of Rep., chapter on, 
(see Association of Ideas,) 225-254. 



Representative faculty. (See Represe) t» 

tion.) 
Retention, 262. 
Retina, image on, 126. 
Royer-Collard, on causation, 437. 



Schema, nature and service of, 222, 3. 

Schleiermacher, theory of sense-perception, 
205 ; on intuitions and the categories, 443. 

Science, classifications of, 336, 7 ; nomencla- 
ture of, 337 ; related to common knowledge, 
365 ; definea, do. ; when complete, 367. 

Scientific knowledge. (See Science.) 

Secondary laws of association, 240-243. 

Secondary Qualities, 535, 6. 

Secundo-primary qualities, 535. 

Sensation proper, defined, 102 ; experienced 
in the soul, do. ; connected with an organ- 
ism, 103 ; Reid's view of, do. ; Berkeley's, 
do. ; Hamilton's, 104 ; involve relations of 
place, do.; differ in kind and degree, 105; 
definiteness of place, do.; inversely to per- 
ception proper, do. ; muscular, 109 ; organic, 
110 ; special, 111 ; of taste, 112 ; of hearing, 
113 ; of gentle touch, 117 ; acute and pain- 
ful of, 118 ; of temperature, do. ; of weight, 
119 ; muscular in touch, do. ; of vision, 126. 

Sense-perception, 93-205 ; conditions and pro- 
cess, chapter on, 93-109 ; defined, 95 ; called 
earliest into action, do. ; seems easy to un- 
derstand, do, ; why difficult, 94 ; what it is 
not, 94, 5 ; example of, in an orange, do. ; 
what it is, 96 ; eight topics of inquiry, 97 ; 
conditions of sense-perception, 97-98 ; bodi- 
ly organism, 98 ; nervous system, do. ; sen- 
sorium, 99 ; appropriate objects a condition, 
100; action of object on sensorium, do.; 
process of sense perception, 101-109 ; psy- 
chical, not physiological, do. ; classes of 
sense-perceptions, chapter on, 109-131 ; 
three named, 109 ; muscular, do. ; organic, 
110 ; special, do. ; smell, 111 ; taste, 112 ; 
hearing, 113-116; q. v.; touch, 116-126; 
q. v. /.sight, 126-132 ; q. v. ; acquired sense- 
perceptions, chapter on, 132-150 , q. v. ; de- 
velopment and growth of, chapter on, ] 50- 
165 ; interest of the problem, 150 ; perplex- 
ing to the imagination, 150 ; data for solv- 
ing it, 151, 2 ; products of, chapter on, 165- 
179; conditions of perception of things, 
171 ; energy by contrast, etc., 172 ; motion, 
do. ; repetition, 173 ; need of, explained, 
173-175 ; familiarity, 175 ; repetition not 
recognition, 176 ; continuance of time, 177 ; 
activity of the soul in, chapter on, 180-187 ; 
summary and review of theory of, 187-189 
theories of, chapter on, 189-205. 

Sensorium described, 99 ; known as extended, 
122. 

Sensory. (See Sensorium.) 

Sight, sense of, 126; organ of, 126-131; 

conditions of, 126 ; image on the retina, 

function of, 127 ; as sensation, 127, 8 ; as 

perception, 128-130 ; place of the object as 

originally seen, 130 ; dignity of vision, 131 ; 

acquired perceptions of, 134, 35 ; e. ; why 

and how its percepts are projected in space, 

157-159 ; percepts of, combined with those 

of touch, 159-162. "*» 

Simple notions, 333. 

Sleep. (See Phantasy.) 

Smell, sense-perceptions of. 110 ; organs, lilt 

acquired perceptions of, 133, 4. 
Socrates, on universals, 339. 



564 



INDEX. 



Somnambulism, three species of, 286, 7 ; nat- 
ural, 287 ; activities required in, do. ; mag- 
netic, do. ; representation in excess, do. ; 
also some sense-perceptions, 288 ; acute but 
limited, do.; the sense-organs used, do.; 
extraordinary intellectual activities, 289; 
state usually forgotten, 291 ; when remem- 
bered, do. ; alternate states, do. ; artificial 
somnambulism, 292 ; hypnotism do. ; rela- 
tion to somnambulism, do. ; control of one 
mind by another, 293. 

Soul, the, signification of the term, 1, 2; 
original designation, 2 ; secondary mean- 
ings, do. ; relations of, to matter, 11-24 ; 
phenomena of, resolved into matter, 12; 
phenomena at first overlooked, 13 ; argu- 
ments for the material structure of, 14-17 ; 
for its spiritual essence, 17-21 ; its phenom- 
ena real, 21 ; cannot be judged by material 
analogies, do. ; described in language of 
physical origin, 22, 3: consequent dangers, 
23, 4 ; faculties of, (see Faculties ;) unity of, 
higher than any other, 29, 30 ; does not 
exclude complexness, 31 ; powers of the 
soul threefold, do. 

Sound, sense-perceptions of, 113-116. 

Space, a condition of imagination, 295 ; void, 
how first known, 454 ; inclosed and inclos- 
ing space, do. ; these relations analyzed, 
do. ; objects as imaged, 457 ; relation to mo- 
tion, do. ; as infinite, do. ; in what sense 
unlimited, do. ; cannot be generalized, 463 ; 
nor defined, do. ; known by intuition, do. ; 
correlate of the extended, do. ; not a sub- 
stance, do. ; nor a quality, do. ; nor a rela- 
tion, or correlation, 476 ; nor a form, do. ; 
in what sense knowable, do. ; conclusion 
respecting, 478. 

Space and Time, chapter on, 454; objects 
generalized, do. ; their relations individual 
and general, 458. 

Species, in sense-perception, scholastic doc- 
trine of, 193 ; nature and permanence of, 
350-353. 

Spectra, 216; 293,4. 

Speculative or critical stage of knowledge, 
52-419. 

Spencer, Herbert, an associationalist, 38-40 ; 
doctrine of consciousness, 66 ; resolves per- 
ception into recognition, 176 ; on the know- 
ledge of the Infinite, 550. 

Spinoza's definition of substance, 532 ; on the 
Infinite, 548. 

Spirit, original meaning of, 1, 2. 

Standards of space and time, 464. 

States of the soul defined, 34. 

Stereoscope, invalid inference from, 129. 

Stewart, Dugald, consciousness of ego, 69 ; 
theory of attention, 178 ; theory of sense- 
perception, 198, 9 ; explanation of latent 
modifications of consciousness, 244 ; on the 
syllogism, 372 ; on geom. axioms, 383 ; 
on primary and secondary qualities, 535. 

Studies, natural order of, 52, 3. 

Subject-objects, 43. 

Substance and Attribute, relation of, in sense- 
perception, 168-171 ; supposes reflex know- 
ledge, do. ; supposed in the concept, 332 ; 
category of, 524 ; chapter on, do. ; import 
of the terms, do. ; etymology of, do. ; dif- 
ferent theories of, do.; Locke on, 532; 
Hume, Reid, Kant, Whewell, 532. 

Substance represented by touch-percepts, 
170, 1 ; distinguished from logical and 
grammatical subject, 524 ; etymology of, 



524; in the abstract, 525; three classes of, 
526 ; spiritual substance, 525 •. distinguished 
by attributes of causation and design, do. ; 
spiritual and human defined, 526, 7 ; J. S. 
Mill's definition, 529 ; material defined, 528 ; 
related to space in a two-fold way, 530; 
power to affect the senses, do. ; matter not 
causative of perception, do. ; Mill, Brown, 
and Kant on, 532 ; permanently occupies 
space, 530 ; not self-subsistent, 531 ; Spino- 
za's error and definition, do. ; Whewell's, 
532 ; belief in permanence founded in de- 
sign, 533. 

Syllogism and Deduction, chapter on, 366- 
377 ; parts of, 369 ; possible changes in, 371 ; 
does not rest on the dictum de omni et 
nullo, 372 ; not identical with induction, 
373 ; explained by relation of reason to 
consequent, 373, 4 ; this by causation or its 
equivalent, 374; sanctioned by Aristotla 
and Leibnitz, 374, 5; immediate syllogisms, 
375, 6. 

Symbolic Knowledge, 354-357 ; can the infi- 
nite and spiritual be symbolized ? 357. 

Synthesis, involved in knowledge, 46. 

System, chapter on, 416-418; any arrange- 
ment of content or extent, 416; of both 
united, do. ; of propositions of either, or 
both, 417 ; of less obvious concepts, do. ; 
in science, 418 ; of abstract®, do. 

Systemization. (See System.) 

Taste, sense-perceptions of, 112-113 ; variety, 
names of, do. 

Tennyson, on self-consciousness, 75. 

Theology, relations to psychology, 8 ; rela- 
tions to final cause, 521. 

Theories of nature of concepts and universals, 
(see Concept); — of sense-perception, chap- 
ter on, 189-205 ; universal, 189 ; reflex in- 
fluence mischievous, 190 ; liable to be er- 
roneous, do. ; pertain chiefly to vision, do. ; 
of the earlier Greek philosophers, do. ; 
Empedocles, do. ; Democritus, 191; the 
Socratic school, do. ; Plato, do.; Aristotle, 
192 ; the schoolmen 193 ; Descartes, 194 ; 
Malebranche, 195 ; Arnauld, do. ; L< eke, 
195, 6 ; Berkeley, 197 ; Hume, do. ; Reid, 
198; Stewart, do.; Brown, 199; Hamilton, 
199-202; Condillac, 202 ; Kant, 203; Her- 
bert, 204 ; Schleiermacher, do. 

Thing in itself explained, 532 ; Kant's doc- 
trine of. (See Kant.) 

Thinking. (See Thought.) 

Thinking, and Thought-knowledge, Part III., 
319 ; terms variously applied, 319 ; relation 
to higher knowledge, do. ; dignity of, 320 ; 
illustrated by an example 320, 1 ; thought 
defined, 321 ; use of term justified, 322 ; ap- 
pellations for the power, 322, 3; forms of, 
324 ; relation to lower powers, do. ; when 
does it begin ? 325 ; abstract and concrete, 
do. ; difficulty of abstract, do. ; to language, 
326. 

Thought, faculty of, defined, 57 ; its objects, 
do.; its conditions, 58 ; how far prepared 
by thought itself, do. ; certain intuitions 
assumed in, do. ; analysis of, involves two 
general inquiries, 59, 60. 

Time and Space, relations of, chapter on. 
454; estimates of, 461; objects general- 
ized, 463. (See T. & S.) 

Time, a condition of imagination, 295 ; object* 
as imaged, 459 ; measure of, 461 ; estimate;- 
of, do. ; relation to motion, 470 ; tim&-rel» 



INDEX. 



560 



lions generalized and suggested by motion, 
471 ; as infinite, 473; in what sense unlim- 
ited, 475 ; cannot be generalized, do. ; not 
defined, do. ; is known by intuition, do. ; 
correlate ot the enduring, 476 ; not a sub- 
stance, 477 ; nor a quality, do. ; nor a rela- 
tion or correlation, do. ; nor a form, 478 ; 
in what sense knowable, do. ; conclusion 
respecting, 479. 
9 ouch, sense, of, 116-126 ; organ, 116, 17 ; con- 
ditions of, 117 ; variety of sensations, do. ; 
gentle touch, 118 ; involving violence, do. ; 
of temperature, 118, 19 ; of pressure, 119 ; 
i muscular, do. ; perception proper of, 120, 1 : 
I of extension, do. ; conditions and act, 
121, 2 ; of extension direct, not indirect, 
122 ; perception of externality in two 
senses, 122 ; of the body to the soul, 123, 4 ; 
of one body to another, 124 ; the leading 
sense, do. ; called general sensibility, 125 ; 
furnishes terms for the intellect, do. ; per- 
••pta of, combined with those of sight, 157,8. 



Unconditioned, (see Infinite,) primary and 

secondary sense of, 544. 
Universal, 226; theories of, nature of. (See 

Concept.) 
Universe, the finite, how conceived, 542. 



Vibrations of nerves supposed to account fol 

representation, 97. 
Vision. (See Sight.) 



Weber, E. H., experiments on touch, 116. 
Whewell, erroneous definition of substance, 

532. 
Wolf, on causation, 495. 
Worcester, Marquis of, discovery of steam, 

412. 
Words, importance of, 353, 4 ; no substitute 

for intuition, 354, 5!: operate by suggestion, 

356. 



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1111 



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